The King Of The House Of Cards
by Garmonbozia
Summary: Two years dead and still going strong, Sherlock is back in London to cut the heart out of the beast for good and all. He'll need determination and he's got it in spades, ready to tear down the last of Moriarty's inner circle, that evil little club. Back off? Not for diamonds... Post-Fall, Pre-House, death wasn't the end, but God knows this might be.
1. A Diamond And A Knave

Landing at Heathrow, he stops to check the local news. Sits a long moment with his phone, looking for the telltale signs, the keywords. He keeps seeing them. He's been seeing them all over the world. Whether he goes, whatever he does to eradicate them, they're still there. 'Mysterious', 'no suspects', 'police stumped'. Perfect crimes. And not just perfect, but Moriarty. Denver to Dubai, his perfectly formed games are still playing out. It's not right, not anymore. For some short period after the death, yes, maybe, there could still have been orders to follow. But they've been dead now, both of them, more than two years.

And Holmes is so bloody sick of arriving that one day too late. After the murder, after the heist, after the kidnapping. There to solve it all, yes, but one chapter at a time, game by game. It's not enough. In two years, there have been eighty-two cases. Seventy arrests, twelve deaths; every case solved. And the army seems no weaker now that it did on the first day.

At night, he sweats and tosses in dreams of the hydra, where every head he cuts away grows another three still more vicious. His only respite is in imagining the creature's heart still beating in his hand, and the heads all falling suddenly still.

But maybe he's been on his own too long.

He's incognito as he leaves the airport, dressed in jeans and suit jacket, coolly casual, unquestionable. Whilst on his travels he's been told he makes a convincing blonde. It's strange to adopt the disguise again; he's been out of Europe, beyond the reach of the sort of press that would recognize him. But to be discovered in England, it's unthinkable. Not before he's ready to be, anyway. And he will be. He will. He's coming back, and he silently promises that to memories of faces he has not allowed to fade. He made that promise the day he walked away, and meant it, and still means it. He's coming back. But not until it's over.

All the paper trails to dummy accounts, all the disconnected phone numbers, every dead end that had been so frustrating coalesced just three weeks ago, in a small cafe in Sydney, and led him to a complete and perfect conclusion.

Firstly, that there _are_ still orders travelling through Moriarty's organization. From how many voices and how they have kept up the run of beautiful crimes, he doesn't know yet.

Secondly, that all those voices are still based in London.

An army is only as good as its generals. He'll have them. He was a fool in the beginning, not to see that this is the only logical course of action, and arrogant to think that he had been so effective in removing the root cause.

He thinks again of that beating heart and knows the address to give the cabbie.

Holmes always sits in the front of taxis now. It means enduring an added brace of mindless chit-chat, but it lets him keep an eye on just who's driving. Cabbies have proven to be a dangerous crowd in the past. Anyway tonight, for once, mindless chit-chat isn't such a pain. He hasn't been doing an awful lot of talking, hasn't heard an awful lot of people talking to him. He makes enough assenting noises to let the driver continue all the way into the city.

Then the streets start to look dimly familiar, like the first few bars of a song on the radio, before you can place the words. It falls over him and balls up, a real, physical pain, just beneath his ribs. His throat knots and the temptation to have the taxi turn around, get away, just skip this part entirely, it's big. It's overwhelming, almost impossible, except that he can't speak to give the order. Instead, the driver lets him out at the appointed corner and Holmes pays his fare.

He walks another two streets, climbs the steps to the right door and knocks. Timidly at first, then stronger.

Waiting for an answer, a scream makes him seize and turn back towards the street. But it's not a scream of fear or pain. It's a teenager, no more than a girl really, crying out with something primal, firing down the middle of a road on a pair of rollerblades. She flashes in and out under the streetlights, crying, "_Yes_! Yes, fucking _A_!" And then she's gone, down the street and round the corner.

The door opens and Holmes forgets her. He turns back.

Molly Hooper stands in the doorway, looking tired and put out. Wearing running shorts and holding a hooded sweater tight across her stomach, and grey fur slippers with rabbit ears. And maybe he's never seen her like this before, but he knows this is the same as ever. She hasn't changed and that's enough for now.

"Can I help you?" she mutters irritably. Then, slowly, recognizes him. "Oh. Sherlock." The sound of his real name is forgotten, unfamiliar. You've gotten tan..."

He stands mute, dazed. He's forgotten what to say, until he finds she's still looking him over. Instinctively, "What? What is it?"

She launches forward, wraps her arms around him so quick and so tight he stops breathing for a moment. Very quickly, he gets over being stunned and raises one tentative hand to pat her back. That's all it takes; Molly remembers herself and stands away, pulling him inside instead. "Sorry. It's just... you've been gone so long, and then you stopped calling and I thought..."

"Dental records, Molly. They would have caught me if I was dead."

"I thought of that. I even tried believing it for a while." He flounders, trying to remember how to say sorry. She sees it before he can quite get there. "Come on," she says, "Come and sit down. I'll put the kettle on. I want you to tell me everything."

No. That's not a good idea. He lets her make tea, he even helps, he sits down with her in the living room with the television on mute and lets the warmth and normality sooth him for a blissful hour, but tell her everything? No. He tells her parts, little stories that will amuse her or explain him, enough to deaden her curiosity, but not everything. Softly, in stilted little phrases like one that has just recently learned the language, he tells her just enough to keep her from asking anymore.

At the end of that hour a low, fearful silence falls. Molly starts to lean towards him, then closes her eyes and falls away. "You're not really back yet, are you?"

"No." And he's remembered now and so adds, "I'm sorry. I didn't want to see you again until everything was ready."

"You can't keep putting me in this position, Sherlock, it's not fair."

"I know. I'm sorry." He's really on a roll now, he thinks darkly, and better stop, because there's a whole road there if he starts apologizing to people and he might never see the end of it if he begins.

"Why are you really here?" she says. She's a little warier now, a little more distant and he really is sorry for her and sorry for everything. But she's asked him a question and he has to answer.

He tells her everything about this latest part, about the voices still calling out to the world, the generals. The hydra and the heart, he only just manages to keep to himself. He wants to tell her that. He wants her to tell him that doesn't matter, that's all normal and fine and alright and he's not losing his mind. But he keeps his monsters to himself. "And I suppose, Molly," he ends, "What I want to know, why I'm really here is... Can I still depend on you?"

"You know the answer to that," she says, "or you wouldn't have come."

"But I need to hear you say it."

"Of course you can."

Relief is sudden and new as a religious conversion, all answers and light and the pressure falling away. But he hasn't quite made it as far as 'thank you' in his remembering. Instead he reaches out and puts his hand over hers, before he starts to get up.

"You're going already?"

"Need to find somewhere to stay."

"You can stay here."

There's a twitch, the long lost ghost of how to smile. "No. Dangerous."

"Oh. Of course. I'm a... what did you call it before... a 'known factor', wasn't it?" He winces to have it brought up again. Their last parting wasn't exactly relaxed. She had wanted to come with him. And back then, when he still had the words to do it, he'd spun excuses and logic until she was all caught up and spun right along with him. But she's had time now to dissect all of that. She knows now; all he was really saying was that he wouldn't see her hurt. This time, when she sees him to the door, she isn't looking up. Last time she looked up, big, hopeful eyes sending him off, wishing him well. This time, she looks down at their feet and she nods. Says earnestly, "Whatever you need, Sherlock. Whatever brings you back."

He's still not quite up to speed on gratitude. He turns away from her and waits for the door to close. That's a bit easier. He knows what that sound is like.

He determines to walk, all night if he has to, down into the darkest part of the city and find, like he usually does, the lowest possible dive, curl up and make ready for what's coming.

He gets as far as the end of the street.

Then the scream again, the girl coming back this way, firing down the footpath at full pelt. When she reaches lamppost near the corner she grabs hold of it and swings right off her feet, right into him. "Look at _you_!" she cries, "Goldilocks!" For just a moment too long, she's all over him, hands straightening his lapels, patting down his pockets. He takes her for a thief, a pickpocket and takes her by the wrist. He twists her arm up behind her, but she shoots both feet forward off her wheels and he has to let go or break the bone. "Alright, alright, calm yourself! I come in peace." He doesn't like that, doesn't like the sound of it. He starts looking about, up and down the road. "Don't look for a cab," she laughs, skating a few circles around him, an arabesque into the street, "there aren't any, not for ages all around. They're all off into the wild blue yonder, carrying nothing but ghosts and all my money."

"You sent them away."

"No flies on the detective!"

"Why?"

She stops dead, skates up and stands toe to toe with him. This stranger looks up, and her eyes are big and glittering. Strangely, though, there's no hope there, nothing of the sort. "Because I want to walk with you," she grins. "Would that be alright?"

So he begins to walk again, and she falls into step in long glides. It gives him a chance to take her in, to notice something other than the demonic eyes and smile. Skinny, malnourished. Dirty. What he originally took to be roller blades are just old skates, too small, strapped to her beaten trainers. A long, greasy ginger ponytail and worn-out clothes. Homeless. She's unusually quiet while he notes these facts and draws his conclusion. "You don't remember me, do you?"

"No." But then, he doesn't remember a lot of things. Maybe she'll come back. 'Sorry' came back pretty sharp.

"Good," she says. "But I remember you. You'll have to do more than get a bit of colour to fool me, _sunshine_." She stops to giggle at her own joke, dancing backward in front of him, keeping distance as certainly and effectively as the end of a treadmill. All of her still holds that desperate, terrifying glitter, like a thing about to drag him into the abyss. He could almost smile at that, when she's so much too late to claim that honour. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for this."

"Bit more than two years?"

"Yeah, but how long it _feels_."

"I think you'd still be surprised."

"Maybe I would." She giggles again and goes ahead of him, speeding along, doubling back. Screams out a poem with madness and animal joy. "M is for Molly, who was washed out to sea, who thought she was forgotten, but never was by me." On the far corner, she stops, with another street lamp for her spotlight, throws her head back and screams, "S is for _Sherlock_!"

Before she can go on, he's with her again, grabbing her back into the hedge with a hand over her mouth. Behind it, she's still laughing. She bites, and when he lets go, giggles, "Don't worry, they'll just think I'm a believer. _Not a trace of doubt in my mind_... You ruined my little verse, should I start again?"

"Kindly don't. Now who are and what do you want?"

"Neither of those questions, nor the answers to them, serves you in the slightest. Next time we meet maybe you'll know what to ask."

"Next time?"

"Of course there'll be a next time. You're not just going to walk off into the sunset after me giving you presents and everything, are you?" His reaction is just a millisecond too slow. In the gap, she's out of his grasp and into the street again. After putting a little distance between them, she stops and backs away slowly, shadow-boxing. "Ladies and gentlemen," she declares to the street, as all her screaming and cackling brings lights on and doors open, "all bets are off. Seconds out, round... three, is this? The fight of the century is back in business. Yes!" She screams off into the distance, and leaves Holmes no choice but to stay in the shadow of the hedge until doors start closing again. He watches after the demon and flinches when a soft hand falls lightly on his shoulder. He spins on his heel, but it's Molly. Running shorts gathering at the waistband of her jeans, tugged on in haste, the rhythms of her speech slightly altered; she came running. "What's going on? I heard someone shouting-"

"I know. Go home. I'll call."

That's all he can say. She pulls back, looks almost hurt. She doesn't say goodbye, doesn't wish him luck, doesn't ask if he's sure, but turns away and goes back the way she came. It was cold of him, he knows that, but he doesn't know yet what those presents are. He wants her far from him. And by the time she's gone, the grumbling husbands and housewives, the young professionals and the kids with their morbid interest, have all given up and gone back inside. There in the street he pulls off his jacket. That's what she was doing. When she first landed on him, when she was all over, he thought she was taking something. She wasn't. She left a present in every pocket. In the inside is an elegant switchblade knife. A brave gift to give in the middle of an assault, he thinks, summoning some of the old eloquence.

In the left side, a single playing card, a joker.

In the right, a four card draw. Jack of Clubs, Queen of Hearts, King of Diamonds, Ace of Spades.

In the breast pocket, next to his own, a mobile phone. Two new messages. The first is a picture of the hand he's just been dealt, laid on green baize, exactly as it is. The second, the address of the lowest sort of dive, a room number and one line of text – 'You're booked in under Smith.'

It all has a very familiar feel.

'Round three,' the messenger said.

Never before has it been so patently a game.

Never before has he been so very willing to enter play.


	2. Four Of A Kind

The girl on the skates is overwhelmed, so full of joy it's like she doesn't exist except to be a vessel for her ear to ear grin, for the laugh that bursts out of her whenever she can't hold it anymore, for her heart swelling up and tunelessly singing his name like praise to angels, forever and ever amen. She lets her route take her down across Primrose Hill, pushing off her wheels at the top and screaming as she descends, nothing but animal noises at first but resolving, wisping up like smoke signals, words forming, "Holmes is alive! I knew it, alleluia, Holmes is alive!"

And people hear her too. She makes sure of it, and makes sure they see her glittering eyes and don't just drop or turn their heads. She grabs strangers in the streets around the park and whispers to them the great secret she would gladly scream to the nation if she only knew how, and dreams that maybe they will go and whisper too, and start it like a river that flows and flows and dam it as you may it will never really stop. She tells them all, but they don't understand. They think the light in her face is just the love of the angel returning, like Jesus gone to harrow out hell and rising up again. Stupid people, but then she shouldn't be surprised. So very vast a majority of people are stupid.

That's not why she's happy.

She's happy because she knows she will very soon be happier. Because if Holmes lives, and he does, and because she's had so much _work_ to do these last days, she knows what's coming. A cautious person would hold back, dream about it, keep their passions secret until they had some proof, but she is _not_ a cautious person. She has faith. She has always had faith and never lost it. A believer? The believers worship the facts about a man they believe to be dead. That's not faith, that's science. Faith is knowing in your heart that you have not been abandoned, even when all seems lost.

Science knows the answer before it begins. Faith can be rewarded.

Molly Hooper was not her first port of call. Three days ago, the faithful one found herself in possession of gifts, and instructions. Holmes was to be given the cards and the phone and the knife, the hotel too, and she was to make herself known. 'Known,' the instructions say, 'and not forgotten. Use your imagination.' She wonders, tonight, if she's done enough to fulfil the second part, hopes so. But before all that, there was more, much more.

She made four other visits, delivering four other jokers, and there she was not to be seen. It was difficult, it was dangerous, but that's what a true believer does, after all. What did it matter to her that the instructions were typed, and unsigned, that there was nothing at all like proof? She doesn't _need_ proof. She knows in her heart that this is the time. She has waited and been so patient and so true and _this is the time_.

As a matter of fact, it is all too literally the time. Those other four jokers each had an address written on them, and they all said eight o'clock, tonight. She's late. Spent too much time celebrating and dancing in the streets and swollen with righteous joy. That's forgivable, surely, she thinks as she takes off again, flying across London fast as the pigeons do. Of all the sins she might commit against her god, joy must be forgivable.

* * *

The other jokers, meanwhile, have all followed orders. They, unlike the faithful messenger, are cautious, logical people, have had to be so as to survive in their chosen professions. But without so much as their playing card invitations to go on, each of them has come. And though they might want to sit here and argue the odds, have a full and intelligent conversation first, this too is a kind of faith.

Moran arrived first. Naturally; he's learned the hard way about mysterious invites. He was here first and waiting in the dark, armed, for whoever might walk through the door. And the location itself, a private room over a better class of bar, well set-out, comfortable, didn't put his fears to rest. He doesn't work with or for this kind of person anymore. He used to, but not anymore. When the door finally opened again, the muzzle of another handgun came first. He almost shot right away, right through the door, gauging headshot-height from the height of the gun, had it lined up and ready. But the hand that crept in to switch the lights on was familiar. A man's hand, but feminine, delicate, lily-white. Wearing the best and newest watch and a titanium ring.

"Charlie?"

Milverton jumped before he managed anything else, one delicate hand balling up to thump his chest. He never did like surprises. And when he flashed the joker he found in his in-tray and Moran flashed one back, he liked that even less. That meant somebody else, somewhere else, was in control. That's his game. He doesn't like finding himself on the other side of it all of a sudden.

And now that the lights were on and the dark reaches of the room were bright, these first two could see the board between the windows. Like a picture frame, curlicues and burnished mahogany, but there was no painting in the frame. Just a background of green baize with four playing cards tacked to it. They approached, passing an open bar on the way. Moran stood, arms folded and gun still in hand, staring at the cards. Milverton stopped to pour drinks and, feeling a little safer in the company of the hitter, tucked his weapon in behind the drip tray. All the better to be kept as a surprise. Just in case.

He carried drinks to the board, stood next to Moran. "Do you know something I don't?"

Bluntly, honestly, "No. You know what it _feels_ like, though?"

"Yes. Of course, you realize the massive logical flaw with that, don't you?"

"Give me a minute, Charlie. I'm still stuck at realizing I don't put it past him."

"What do you want to do?"

"Wait 'til the rest get here."

"How do you know there's a rest?"

Moran held up the playing card between his fingers in line with the first one on the board, motioned Milverton to do the same. "And there's four cards up there. So I'm thinking we're probably only half the party."

And a right little reunion it's turned out to be. Morgan arrived at eight, bang on, and with no gun or other outward sign of protection. But Morgan is three-hundred-and-fifty pounds of Highland muscle, well on the far side of six feet and all of it topped with a head so frequently scarred his hair grows only in patches like jigsaw pieces. Morgan doesn't often come with outward signs of protection. So far, he's brought a much brighter attitude to the whole event, but then, he's easily distracted. Morgan saw old associated and forgot entirely that he does not know why he was brought here, and who he can't help but suspect is responsible.

Still, that essential question hangs over them. "Not to spoil the good humour, lads," Moran interrupts, "but we're still one down. Who do we think we're waiting on?"

Milverton points up at the board, with Morgan jolting like he's only just noticed it. He snarls, "Well, there's a queen up there. Is that you, Sebastian?"

"Be a black queen if it was me, y'prick."

"Then I think we all know who's yet to put in an appearance, don't we?"

Just then, a fourth voice joins them from the door, "I think that's my entrance cue."

Mies enters on four inch heels, tossing a mass of black curls back over her shoulder. Milverton eyes her with disgust and she winks in reply. "You're late," he tells her.

"I was scoping the place out. Never know what you're walking into. Place could be a den of thieves and murderers. Evening Sebastian, Angus." She seats herself by Moran on the old low Chesterfield, crosses her legs pointedly in Milverton's direction. Morgan gets up to fix her a drink. "Oh, bless you, you great brute," she purrs after him. "Anyway, what's the score? We all look most serious. Somebody died?"

Moran takes her under his arm and turns her towards the board. "Very good question, girl." In seconds, she's on her feet again, standing in front of the cards. The edge of her joker is just visible, creeping out of her back pocket. Mies is a thief, and has instincts the others don't. She checks the edges of the frame for tripwires, all the carvings and coils for cameras or microphones, behind the whole thing for a safe or something hidden. Announces that it's 'clean' before anyone had thought it might be dirty.

Milverton shakes his head. Whether to emphasize his point, or because he's watching Morgan fetch and carry for the woman he prefers to refer to as the Bitch, it's hard to say. "You're all missing a rather inescapable fact here."

"Inescapable is a very strong word, Charlie."

"Moran, _you_ saw it. You watched it with your own eyes. _I_ heard it from you; you saw him dead."

"I saw him swallow a bullet on a roof, this is true, but I also saw Holmes jump off it, so-"

"Wait, you all don't think this is Jim, do ye?" Morgan bursts.

Moran and Milverton roll their eyes. Mies, without taking her eyes off the board, snaps, "Wake up, Angus. _Has_ to be."

"I'm with her," Moran announces. "If it's not him it's someone doing a bloody good impression of him. It's too bleeding _weird_ to be anybody else."

"Who else knows to bring us four back together?" Mies says, spinning on her heel. "Who else would know we'd come without an explanation? Charlie, you must have thought about it, even for a second, or you wouldn't be here."

She's right. And Milverton hates the fact that she's the one who said it. He goes quiet for a second, but swallows down on his drink and comes back strong, "Then what the hell _is_ it? It's cards. It's no instructions, nothing clear, nothing certain."

"You're very negative, Charlie." Mies settles again next to Moran, takes the joker from his fingers very briefly before handing it back to him. He reads what she's starting to say, studies the card back and front and lets the thought crystallize.

"The cards are invitations. The rest comes later. Is that what you're thinking, Dani?"

"Just about. Angus?"

"Honest? I'm not following this at all. Last I heard dead people didn't come back and play games."

"But if he did," Mies says, looking him dead in the eye. "Just for the sake of argument, if Jim magically appeared and asked you to, would you play?"

"Yes."

There's something almost heartbreaking in how quickly he says it, how earnest and deeply felt the answer is. The Bitch smiles, leans forward and puts her hand on his knee. "Well, that settles that, then. Faith comes first, belief comes after. You can be our doubting Thomas."

"This is the most insane thing I've ever heard."

"...If Charlie doesn't beat you to the title. What's your problem now?"

"Where to _begin_..."

"No." It's Moran who said that. Said it firmly and severely, heaving himself up from the sofa. He has been quiet and lethargic, willing to hear out the argument, but that's done with now. Now he stands straight, the Colonel living up to his title and goes on in a voice that dares them to disagree, "No more talk. There's no need. Nothing else to discuss." Positioning himself in front of the board he points at the cards. "Dani's spot on about this. This is just to accept or decline. RSVP. The only real question remaining is who set it up. The first theory is the one that's causing all the tension. The other theory is that it's _not_ that person. Either way, the only chance we have of finding the person that's gone to all this trouble to bring us together or set us up, is to play."

"Well said, Sebastian." With a single heel click, Mies is first to the board, swapping the joker, hot and curved from her pocket, for the queen. She steps away, feeling both Morgan and Milverton watch her, baffled and disgusted. Stops dead. "Sorry, nobody else wanted the queen of hearts, did they?"

"I don't think anyone's going to take it from you, love," Moran says kindly, stepping behind her, taking on the ace of spades.

Milverton eyes him; "Is it the racial slur or the Motorhead reference you're reacting to?"

"It's the death card, Charlie boy, so just you watch yourself, alright?"

Running out of options and hating the idea of the common jack, Milverton grabs for the king of diamonds. Morgan is left with the clubs and no idea what he's really doing. Mies puts a hand on his arm and explains kindly, "Don't worry. If we're right about what this is, you'll have a job to do very soon, and much clearer than all this."

"I still honestly think this is insane," Milverton mutters. Points between Mies and Moran, "And I think you two have lost your minds."

Moran claps a great shovel of a hand between Milverton's skinny shoulders. "Long may that sunny disposition serve you, your Lordship."

Four jokers are left on the board. Three faces and an ace are uncertainly held or trustingly tucked away.

And if that's all there is, then what are they standing here for? And yet none of them is going anywhere. It doesn't quite feel like they're finished here. And it's Morgan again, the great hulk, that leans down and picks up his drink. Stumbles over his words like he doesn't quite know what to say. "Shouldn't we... I mean, since it's the four of us, together and since we're never..."

"But what do we toast, mate?" Moran grins, interrupting to help him. "May he rest in peace? Or to his health?"

And so they leave one by one, and leave the drinks untouched. Last in is the last to leave; Mies stretches a long white finger and flicks the lights off. Looks in and sees the glasses standing gleaming in the dark, protesting all the things they don't know yet, all the things they'll lie and cheat and steal and kill to find out.

"Tell you what," she calls ahead to the others on the stairs, "if it's not him, I'm going to slaughter whatever bastard thinks he can mess us about..."


	3. Back At The Table

Days pass, waiting. Holmes took the room booked under Smith without fear, without a moment's hesitation. Wryly, smilingly it occurred to him that he has rarely, if ever, felt safer than he does here, under Moriarty's quiet expectations. No move will be made against him that he cannot counter. That's not how the game works. And him discovered and dragged out into the daylight, well that just wouldn't be good sport at all. No, Mr Smith is a solid cover. His room is decrepit, but utterly secure.

And these days? Holmes has waited before, of course he has. It's worse than boredom. There isn't even a moment to think or go blank, knowing that everything is just about to arrive. He's waited before and it's painful, an honest, physical ache that starts in his chest like desire and stretches into every muscle, always tense, practically shaking, ready, completely, body and soul ready for the assault. He's waited before.

This isn't that. There's a sort of peace, a patience. Something refreshing, when Molly calls up to check in, about having nothing to report.

The days are not eternities and they don't hurt. He lives them rather than suffering them.

Holmes takes it all to be just another part of the gambit. A decompression. An athlete will not train the day before the race. All very cordial, most genteel. He expects nothing less. Little does he know, he only has to wait while his four carefully selected adversaries are hesitating or preparing or awaiting instructions. Maybe he'd worry more if he was aware of that fact. Maybe he'd be tortured, imagining who they might be and where and what they might be doing. But he doesn't, so he's not.

He's only waiting and feeling, for once, content.

For the information of those who care, Milverton is running through endless security tape in the booth above a club he part owns, bored out of his head and struggling to find something juicy. It'll come, it always does. _Somebody_ always does. But the whole task is just made the more arduous by the fact that he could care less, could believe a hell of a lot more in what he's doing. Morgan is trying to get over what Mies and Moran were saying. The more he thinks about it, it's almost making sense, and he counters this with drinks. He's waiting, knowing that if there is a job for him to do it will be given to him. But he doesn't have the peace that Holmes does in the long, lingering times. Mies is seducing an insurance agent who has access to the security information on a large private home out in Richmond, doing well. The work isn't difficult and she quite likes this temporary new partner, so it's alright. Moran is realigning the sight of a high-powered rifle he's been using and customizing for several years now. Making himself promises about the next time he sees certain faces down that lens.

Not a one of them is all that aware of the others. Mies' agent passes through Milverton's club and no one notices. Morgan is closing in on oblivion in a dark, crowded little pub with no music and no conversation, where the drinkers are invariably solo and serious, when Holmes tucks his face in behind his collar and leaves Mr Smith's hotel.

It's been a long, long time since he walked London. It doesn't seem quite such a war ground as it once did. He's seen worse, so much worse. When he thought Moriarty's web had collapsed, he followed threads all over the world. He's seen children living on landfills in Calcutta and cooking meth in Canberra. He's watched dogs be provoked to tear each other's throats out for sport across America, had women still wearing last night's bruises slide up to him in the Far East and offer anything human imagination can produce. He's seen bodies dismembered and strung piece by piece on the border bridges of Mexico. The London which had always been such a prison to him, such a foul, fetid pit he never wanted to leave because there was a place for him here, that's gone. London? London is just a sick, familiar swamp, a mire with all the dead and unforgotten things of his history trapped down inside it, and always pulling on him, always inviting him to join his cast offs.

It's late, and a fly poster is working fervently along a stretch of wall, looking over his shoulder. Pasting this week's flyers over last week's. Layers upon layers. London keeps itself too new to ever really sink. It's slipping, make no mistake, being sucked down constantly into the channel of the Thames to be spat out in the estuaries, but it's clawing back all the time. London will never be more than the beginnings of a hell. He walks, looking at nothing, seeing everything, thinks to himself that it is the curse of the developed world to battle against the inevitable, to see everything as salvageable, fixable. A return to Victorian family values and no child left behind and urban regeneration, perpetually slapping lipstick on an increasingly decrepit pig.

But there's no surprises for him here. Not anymore.

And where does that leave him, when London's hell was all he ever dreamt he deserved? How can he feel above it now? Why does he feel the need to return to Cape Town, to Juarez, Los Angeles?

London can't punish him enough anymore. But he's here for the game. Pray it's the last and some peace comes with it, some safety. God, how he's missed the safety and security of the game, and not even known his own pain until now, when it's been taken back. To know that he is recognized, not just as the enemy but as a worthy enemy, as a force to be reckoned with. That's a comfort. It's a comfort to know there is an ending coming. It is a comfort to know the rules, the honour and there _has_ always been honour. Not for a moment has he ever denied that. Every challenge was followed by a chance. His exchanges with his opposite number were always frank and honest. Moriarty never cheated.

As before, all very cordial. These people he believes he's come for, the remaining lieutenants, they seem to have that same understanding of the rules and the etiquette. If they don't he won't be long putting them in their place. He intends to do that anyway and it might as well be good-natured.

And here, finally, he has a shot, to know these people, to play the game simultaneously.

Oh yes, Holmes knows how the game will go. It's the only logical escalation from last time. A real, honest opportunity to have the two sides run in parallel, one intellect against the combined knowledge and experience of four.

He catches himself smiling and stops, dead, mid-step.

From Wardour Street he eases back into the mouth of a mews and stands, a very long time, with his back to the wall, with his head down. Ashamed. Warning himself. Carefully summoning to mind all the things that he's lost and everything he's destroyed. He's had to pack those pains away just to live, but they serve him now.

The fire can't be allowed to go out. He can't let himself forget his hate.

'Game' is just a word. And it's the wrong one.

* * *

[So that's all the set-up out of the way. Next time, ladies and gents, we'll have the opening play from the King of Diamonds. That's if you want it? I find it really hard to judge how interested people are if they don't tell me. (Kookie, my love, I figure I know where you stand. It's just to the right of the ever faithful Madis. Thanks for being believers.) Anybody who's read my other fics knows this is a bit different, so any comments or criticism are welcome and will be taken on board, now that I've finished my intro. Place your bets!]


	4. King Charles

If Charles A Milverton had the Bitch here in front of him, he would without hesitation wring the life from her body with his bare hands. Well, he'd try. It hasn't ended too well his last few attempts. If it had just been Moran, he could have talked him round, but that's the trouble with zealots. One on their own will listen to sense, but get a pack of them together and they drive each other to frenzy. They bring all the same dangers as riots or religious extremism or Beatlemania, but that their god is faceless, an unknown quantity. And a lunk like Morgan, every chance he might ever have had at a pick of intelligence drowned and dried up in alcohol, he was all too susceptible to what they had to say. It's utterly disgusting. He should never have stood for it. And what makes it worse is that he knew how precisely it would all happen.

People, see. People are Milverton's business.

And the first thing to learn, when one is the people business, is that there's no such thing as a bloody snowflake. Unique is a comforting myth used by schoolteachers to coddle the idiot masses and by wily self-help authors to rob them blind. There is no such thing as unique. The only comfort there is is truth, and the truth is plain; people come in distinct sorts. They are all combinations of the same set of variables. Accept that fact and they very quickly become yours.

A cold minute wastes out while he remembers the last person he knew who really shared the vision.

It's not that he doesn't want to help. Please don't think that. It's not that he wouldn't be over the moon if he were to magically get his drinking partner back. The man always had good whiskey, good ideas and a challenge lined up. But it's just not the way the world works.

Anyway, these two years, he's _almost_ become a legitimate businessman. Not that the old tricks don't come in handy when acquiring premises or fighting for drinks licences or late night opening. Milverton's success is built on a lot of dirty secrets. But does that make it any less of a success? He doesn't like to think so. Anyway, every body he buries he builds up tall on top of. The walls may well be full of skeletons, but they'll never know until they tear him down. And he doesn't intend to let that happen anytime soon.

Which is why it seems to him so absolutely ridiculous to risk it all on a silly game that might not even be what Moran and Mies so fervently believe and that _might_, in fact, just _might_ be a ploy to trap them all. Personally, he doesn't put it past Holmes, but nobody seems willing to even _consider_ the other possibilities.

And yet, and yet, here he is, picking over case files, looking for something dicey enough to attract attention, to do the job, and yet, with any luck, tame enough to keep him secure.

Just looking, you understand. He doesn't consider a cryptic system of token exchange, _playing cards_ of all things, to be binding. Milverton's not committed.

Just looking.

He's interrupted by a knock at the door. Which really shouldn't happen. Not only is his office markedly private and behind three levels of security, but it's above one of the most exclusive destination nightclubs in the nation's capital. Nobody comes here so they can meet the man upstairs. So before he goes to the door, he quietly, unhurriedly, unplugs the external hard-drive that keeps safe all the materials of his trade and puts it away in the safe. Covers the safe. There's another, stronger knock at the door, but it's not impatient. Just insistent.

He opens the door without caution. It will be the police and they'll find nothing, or it'll be downstairs security needing him to sort something, or one of his own men. No more than that.

It's not, though.

It's a dour-looking born again shoving a Bible under his nose. "Have you heard the good news?"

"No, and I'll live, thank you." He starts to close the door. Like he's at home, like this is any door-to-door witness. The encounter is so familiar and natural he forgets the circumstances entirely. He begins to question himself just as the door stops against the bones of a foot, the rubber wheel of a roller skate.

"Are you sure? Because it's really, really good. Promise." The toneless, boring voice holds up, and the shuffling, bow-shouldered stance holds up, the Bible stays held up, out at arm's length, but the words are all wrong. They trigger something and Milverton flings open the door. Grabs the witness by the face and turns it up to him. He looks into dead grey eyes as they suddenly light and a grin spreads and the head starts to nod despite his grip and she says, "It's really good."

Milverton snatches off the modest brown head-scarf. A flutter of black crow's feathers falls out, as well as a long rope of greasy ginger hair. He doesn't know it, but he's winding the scarf out tight between both fists. All the better to strangle her with. "_You_," he spits. "How did you get in here?"

"Through doors. On my feet. God helped me. I move in mysterious ways. It's His gig, but He lets me do that." And sure enough, she moves mysteriously past Milverton, insinuating herself entirely against his wishes. Flopping into the visitor's chair in front of his desk, she unzips her shapeless brown cardigan over a faded David Bowie t-shirt. "Tell you what, though, it's exhausting, this divine mission lark."

Milverton fights for calm, looking at the mess of feathers on the other side of his door. He doesn't ask about them. He knows what she'll say if he does.

They've met before, of course. He was asked to tell her about people, his way. And he did try. Strangers are one thing, but Charlie does try to do for his friends. But the faithful messenger, quite aside from being another zealot like Moran _et al_… Milverton cannot, try as he might, predict her. Insanity, it seems, is the best defence against predictability. And of course, he can't be a hypocrite, can't lie about _himself_; he freely admits that, seeing he cannot possibly understand her, he hates the little demon to the core of his being.

"The angel Odbody-" he begins, when he's choked down all the bile.

She snaps, practically screams, "You don't call me that!" Then curls in on herself. Opens her little black bible and removes, from its hollowed-out innards, a small hip flash. Unscrewing the top, "That's _His_ name for me."

"And what is your name amongst us mere mortals? Today's will do; I don't want the full roster."

"We'd be here 'til _Judgement Day_," she giggles. Then thinks about it for a moment. "No, you can call me… _Faith_. How's that, Charlie? Get a little faith in your life?" By now, she's closing up with the desecrated Bible again, holds it out to him with the same carelessness as she would if the flask were bare; "Bit of good news, Charlie?"

He doesn't know this either, but his fingers are curling and uncurling, forming tighter and tighter fists around the headscarf, stretching a good six inches out, enough to get around her neck and not enough for her to wriggle out of. He starts back across the room, rounds his desk. As he sits down, he asks, "And what are you doing here, Faith?"

"Told you already. Spreading good news. You haven't said you want it yet."

When she drums her fingers on the arm of the chair, he realizes he's drumming his. He stops, abruptly, and she grins. This, this is why he hates her. The pointless games, the constant manipulation to no purpose whatever. The fact that he falls for it. Mies must have gotten to her before he did.

"You have a message," he states, loathe to do what she wants and make it a question.

But she dodges, just nods, "I am a conduit for His word."

"Deliver your message."

The most devoted of all disciples pouts, looks down at her Bible, holding it like it's real, like it's all she has. Looking wounded, infinitely sad, "Say please, Charlie…"

He reaches into the desk and peels the top note off a grand roll, pushes it across the desk at her. So far as he remembers, bribery was always a solid option with this animal. But, predictably unpredictable, now she jumps back from it like a viper, coiling in the low corners of her chair and whimpering until he takes it back again. Close to tears, she mutters, "There's no need to insult me." She gets herself back on her feet, standing straight, with square shoulders, flat little chest puffed out, like a child about to recite in the school assembly. In nursery-rhyme singsong, in an eight year old's voice, she channels the angel in the nativity play. "Be-not-ah-fraid-I-bring-news-of-great-joy… from Him Upstairs."

Milverton can't help himself, points at the ceiling. "Top floor, my dear."

From the childlike angel the real demon is spat forth; the disciple's face changes so totally that Milverton draws back. She looks as though she might breathe fire, but bites instead, "_The eyes of the arrogant man will be humbled and the pride of men brought low. The Lord alone will be exalted in that day. _That's Isaiah, two-eleven. Here's Moriarty, one-one; _Odd, go to Charlie and tell the lazy git to get his arse in gear. His Majesty is waiting._"

Which changes things, just a little. While she stands raging at him, Milverton swallows his original fear and tries to look relaxed. Wants to put her off. If he looks calm, maybe she'll follow. His heart beats out against his shirt, but that's nothing to do with her. He's got the scarf to strangle her with. He's got security _somewhere_ that she's gotten past once. They won't be happy about that. No, he's fine with her, she's safe. No, no, it's that other little game changer that has him worried.

"Did he say that to you?"

"Yes."

"When?"

"Doubter. Unbeliever"

"_When_, damn you?!"

"About two hours ago. Look-" There's a pause while she wriggles a mobile phone out of her pocket and shows him the message. "That's it there, black and white."

Milverton sighs, relieved. "So nobody actually _said_ anything?"

The messenger visibly _trembles_. Either she'll cry or she'll leap across the desk and murder him here and now, most likely using her teeth and fingers. But again, she defies every expectation. "Heathen. You'll regret saying that to me. You know what happens to heathens, don't you? Heathens get burned. King Charlie of the heathens. This is a warning, Charlie Heathen. Redeem yourself, Charlie Heathen. Redeem yourself or burn with the rest of your kind."

"Redeem myself. Play along, you mean?"

She breaks this new character, this Witchfinder General, just long enough to nod at him, to say confidentially, "And tell Miss Mies she's next to the plate after you, alright?" Then she regresses, falling back, beginning to chant, over and over, "_Burn_ him. _Burn_ him. _Burn_ him."

"I've had enough of this," Milverton mutters. Gets back up from his chair and goes to her. Takes her by the shoulders and pushes her along on her wheels, back to the door. "Get out. Now. Leave."

And in all of this, she chants and chants and chants, but leaves. Retreats from him, holding his eyes and her own are blazing. She backs up as far as the stairs, hitches herself up on the rail and starts to slide down like the ghost of Marley, declaring, "All hail the king of heathens, and see how bright will all his riches burn!"

That's what makes him uneasy. The rest, the message, the demoniac little monster herself, the entire visit, he could ignore all of that. But she talks about his riches burning, and he thinks of what terrible foundations would be revealed if his palaces were to be razed, and Milverton returns to his work. With new interest now. Fresh eyes. A reignited zeal.


	5. Dead Man's Hand

Waiting could have just begun to become dull, just started to eat at the edges of his mind. Could have.

Early in the morning of the fifth day, Holmes, Mr Smith, is wakened by noises just across the hall. Management is banging on the opposite door and saying, "Mr Diamond? Mr Diamond, I know you're in there. It's been two days, now, I need more than your security." Management isn't giving up, either; he has time to get up, to carefully, casually make himself presentable. He really must stop wearing last night's clothes, though. Day by day, he's starting to look like he belongs in this bloody pit. All part of the disguise, of course, that's all. That's all. Part of keeping himself congruent with his surroundings.

So when the irate little man takes off to phone the police, he looks perfectly natural taking his place in the hallway. And they're too used to drunks and the lost here to question someone who would appear to be struggling with a lock. They all get it wrong.

Holmes has had five days to study his room key, to note that the locks are as low rent as everything else. He's started carrying a fine metal bar in his pocket. Well, the hotel itself _had_ to have something to do with it. A few peaceful, quiet days, that's fine, all in the game. But it would have been foolish to believe he would have been given a haven for the duration of play.

He has no compunction about breaking open Mr Diamond's room. Why would he?

The room itself is a mirror image of his. There's nothing interesting there.

Mr Diamond isn't that interesting either. He's dead already. He's lying side to side across the bed, shirtless and stubbled. His eyes are rimmed red and there's a hypodermic syringe sticking out of his arm. No bruising implies a self-administered dose, stippling around the puncture indicates a very quick and quiet fatality. Whatever was in the needle was laced with something more lethal.

Holmes is in no hurry. The police aren't going to hurry over here to remove a suspected non-payer. He's got hours, if he needs them, but he won't. He stops, standing over the body. Dials Molly and lets it ring.

"Hello? Who's this?"

"Good morning, Molly."

"Oh. Hello. This… you're not calling from your number."

That surprises him at first. He looks at the phone in his hand and she's right; it's not his. It's the other one, the one the insane messenger slipped into his pocket at the very first. "Yes," he says, softly, "Use this one from now on, if you don't mind."

"What's going on-?" She starts to use his name, but stops herself. In company, or at least in public, so he'll keep it brief.

"Can you still get me into the lab?"

"No. Can't start all that again, not without people suspecting."

"It's important, Molly."

She sighs. She's pacing the floor and he can hear her. And yes, he hates what he does to her, knows it's poor repayment for everything she's ever given him, but _this_, this is bloody important and she's acting as if she doesn't even realize. "Alright," she says eventually. "But it'll have to be after-hours. Daytime's no good."

"Molly-"

She snaps, "It's all I can do for you; take it or leave it." Cutting him off. Unable to hold back, and emotional. He was willing to argue with her until he heard this last, that something welling up in the back of her throat and all the implications of it. What she wants to tell him is that he was gone and she still existed in between, that her life now has no place set aside for him like the old one did.

"Of course," he concedes. "You can call back later, Molly."

"Thank you." He starts to say goodbye, he's remembered that one, but she's forgotten; Molly hangs up before he can begin.

Long seconds waste.

Holmes shakes himself and returns to the investigation. Later he'll be face to face with Molly and later he'll worry about her. Right now he's face to face with the dead Mr Diamond and he has work to do.

First, he gets the needle. Caps the end with hotel notepaper and starts to gather the evidence in a pillowcase. The needle still contains traces of whatever killed the victim.

Oh, and have no doubt that this is a victim. This isn't a drug overdose or suicide or accidental death. Yes, he pushed down on the plunger himself, but that doesn't mean there isn't somebody else involved. He finds the man's wallet in his discarded jacket and has all his suspicions confirmed.

For one, his name isn't Diamond, it's Forrester. His billfold is fat with twenty and fifty pound notes and he carries a handful of business cards. Expensive, well-made business cards on thick, embossed paper. Money's not an issue. There's a photograph too, of an elegant and very beautiful woman. It has been well-kept. There are no creases, no stains. Only the top corner has gone white and soft with handling; taking her out to show, or to look at. Heartbreak is not a problem. Even if she'd betrayed him or done something, this picture means so much to him it would have been the first thing to be wilfully destroyed.

As far as the motivation for suicide goes, that's two of the top three reasons knocked out. And all the other usuals might be given the umbrella term of 'secrets'.

Men whose secrets are killing them don't come to places like this to die. They do it at the source of their shame, and the place where they snapped, and they leave long, rambling notes full of excuses and apologies and justifications. There's no note at all, here. As far as Holmes can tell, until just two days ago, Mr Diamond Forrester was living a full and happy life, content to live on in peace and happiness ignoring whatever it is which is supposed to have driven him to the edge. Either it's a long slow process of far more than two days, or it's a snap decision.

He can't remember who told him that. It wasn't something he read, because he remembers. Somebody said to him, 'The farm is nearly always an impulse buy.' But he can't remember who.

Then, two days ago, Forrester followed instructions to find this place and check in under Diamond.

Holmes knows this because a man with a wallet full of notes would have at least paid his first night. No, the reservation was made for him, the room was prepared. Forrester assumed it had been paid for. All of this, so that two days later an irritable concierge would be knocking on the door and calling loudly, 'Diamond, diamond'. All arranged, all for him. Arrivaderci, Mr Forrester, but consider your message delivered.

It should, perhaps, annoy him more that a man is dead already, that this is how it has to begin.

This is war, though. War works this way.

So taking the needle and the wallet, Holmes begins to leave the room. Then, as an afterthought, stops to check the man's trouser pockets. No real reason. Here, indoors, in comfort, not going anywhere, what would he have in his pockets?

A King of Diamonds. Slightly curved from resting against a gym-toned thigh. Still holding just a little heat. The King of Diamonds cut it a little fine, killing Mr Forrester.

Holmes goes back across the hall with that on his mind. Always a moment short. Always waiting for the management to come shouting and draw his attention. How can he see everything, everywhere, and miss it all so totally, and _every_ time? He needs to think differently. Starting now, he needs to find a new approach. Some way to get ahead of them, a boon, a cheat, a short cut.

He opens his door to find the mad messenger curled up sleeping against his pillows. Slams it shut to wake her. She jumps not only into consciousness but to her feet, standing to attention like she's used to such awakenings, like she's been trained to it. Then recognizes him and turns sheepish. Nods back to the bed. "Goldilocks, remember? Thought I'd keep up the theme."

"So we're still with fairytales,then?"

"_No_, not at all. That's just my little joke. No, we're well moved on from fairytales. Playing cards now." Nodding earnestly, she points at the rickety fibreboard dresser. The four playing cards he was given, his hand to play, have been set against each other in two little tents. A pointed capital M.

She knows everything. It's an instinct, a hunch, but this little animal has everything to tell him, if only she could be made intelligible. Right now she's just smiling, looking childishly excited, twisting her bony hands together; "So are we all set, did you get your first round over there?"

"I did."

"Good. By the way, if you do get stuck at anything, you're allowed to ask me for help. I'm supposed to tell you that now."

"Alright then, who are you, who sent you, who's behind this and how do I get there?"

The go-between rolls her eyes, shoves her hands into her jeans pockets. One in the front pocket, one in the back; the other front one has her phone in it. A nice phone. Doesn't match the rest of her. Same as the one he's using now. Something occurs to him over that. He doesn't break the glare with the girl, but he'll think about it in a moment, keeps turning the little machine against his palm so he'll remember.

First things first, he knows he should get a hold of hers at some point.

"You can't use me to _cheat_, Mr Holmes. That wouldn't be fair on the others."

"Ah, so you can help them too, then."

"I have to."

With one eyes still on her left front pocket, "How do I get in touch with you? If I need you, I mean."

"Oh," and she darts around him, skates helping her slide to fast to be pickpocketed, "I'll be about. I only came today to let you know."

She starts to open the door. He reaches past and slams it shut again. "Your name, then."

The messenger rattles a sigh. "Why does everybody always seem to think that's so important? Whatever you _want_, I don't _care_…" But over a long second, the boredom and irritation pass and turn into that glittering grin again. "I've had all sorts of names. Girls' names and boys' names and animals' names and the names of angels gold and scarlet. You can call me John if you want."

"Alright, get out."

"J is for Johnny, who knew not a thing, and that's for the best; you know the pain you'd bring."

"_Get. Out."_

"Yes, sir." Backing away from him, out the door. Tugging a hank of hair like a forelock. He watches her go and knows he should hold onto her, find out _something_, but if he holds her now it'll be by the throat. "At your service, sir. Whatever you want, sir."

Forget her. Not important.

Forrester. Take the evidence around Forrester to Molly, let Molly take him to the real Mr Diamond, the King of them. Forrester. Molly. Diamond. No girl, no messenger. No John. Forget John.


	6. Diamond Dog

At Bart's, after hours, everything is quiet. Somewhere, A&E never slows down and there's always someone needing attention in ICU, but compared to the daytime, this is nothing. And Holmes, of course, has come and gone at this time before, but never really thought about it, never noticed just how unnoticed he must go. He's never had to before, you see. Before, he didn't care who saw him. Now he has to and he notices there's no one here to notice. That Molly was right and this is a better idea. Today, hiding the evidence with him, the waiting started to hurt, but she was right. Molly has protected him, and it's not the first time either.

He finds her waiting. Patiently checking and signing off test results, but nonetheless waiting. The tension across her shoulders, the tiredness around her eyes; waiting.

He walks in and in a heartbeat she's up on her feet. "I couldn't get the case," she says. "They took him to the Royal."

"Don't worry," he tells her. With a light, experimental touch to the shoulder, he guides her back to her stool. "I know what killed him. That's not the problem. I need to know who."

"But…" she says softly, thinking it through even as she goes on, "Suicide. I called over and they said suicide."

"Doesn't mean somebody didn't kill him." He says that, and he says it in earnest. He's not expecting the smile that begins to glimmer over her face, the voiceless breath of a laugh. Not expecting her to look away, back to her reports. "What?"

"You," she says. "You and your… _riddles_."

"I can explain if you-"

Rolling her eyes, "No. I'm sure I'll find out." Two years separation and she's learned to see through him, completely. While he was here and alive, there was no respite, no time for her to gather her thoughts before he appeared to baffle her anew, but she's had time, analysed, studied the facts and, it seems, found him to be really rather predictable after all. There was a time he would have found that irritating. But that was a long while ago now. Now he looks at her, knowing she is no longer waiting to suffer his gaze, and thinks it's wonderful. "You can work away," she says, apparently to her reports. "There's nobody about this time of night."

For the first time ever, he feels the need to fill the silence that falls. He has work to do, gathering a sample from the used needle, loading the mass spectrometer, but for some reason he can't just let her sit there, as if she's a simple gatekeeper, as if there's no more to her than to let him come and go. "I'm sorry about this morning. It was… everything was starting. I don't think I even considered the fact that you might have company."

"I was here," she answers simply, with the sound of a smile. "Taking some fourth years through their first full autopsy observations. I'd already had one faint on me. You weren't that much of a distraction, by comparison."

When he met her at home, when she was wearing bunny rabbit slippers, it was easy to believe that time had not changed her. He needed to believe. That first night, those first steps back in London, anything else would have killed him. Even now, he's taking in the facts and they are knotting inside him, tying his thoughts up in useless circles, making him nauseous, feeling just exactly like certain psychotropic poisons that trick the user into catatonia. He concentrates instead on his analyses, but the machine takes time to do his job and then there's nothing.

He's searching for something else to say when Molly laughs. "The students, actually, think I'm having an affair."

"Beg pardon?"

"Think, Sherlock. My side of the conversation this morning, what would _you_ have heard?"

"No, I got that, very droll. I was questioning the rest. Students?"

"Yes, the fourth years I mentioned. I've been here too long; they're making me pass on my knowledge. I'm on the pathology module, for those that choose it…"

"I knew that would happen."

"Excuse me?"

"You, teaching. I knew that would happen."

"And how, if I can ask?"

"Simple logic. If one wishes to train the half-formed, one must necessarily send them to one who is a master of the craft."

"So basically what you're saying is I'm the best little corpse-cutter in London. Thanks."

He can't tell whether she means that or not, still working through all the subtleties of language and interaction. He'd narrowed things down, you see, made it a case of interrogation or intimation. They were the only two modes he needed and he has cultivated them, made himself an expert. But in the process he has had to let go of those remaining scraps of the human he always kept about him. In the pursuit of the Moriarty network, they proved useless, and they had always taken up so much energy to maintain.

It was liberating, in a way.

That's another thing he wants to tell Molly about. How he gave up entirely on those few social restraints he had suffered so to keep. How free and honest it felt to become simply the organic machine, the computer that feeds and rests only in between questioning and interpreting its world. It was wonderful, _he_ was wonderful. But he looks at her, and the explanation stops on his lips. It is consumed instead by shame that he would even dream of saying that to her. She would understand, yes, of course she would, but how could he sit here and admit to her that just being in her presence is an effort, an imposition? He has to dig up long buried habits just to be civil. How can he tell her that?

He says nothing, and stares instead at the wheel flying round with only one sample to test.

It is cripplingly simple. The cause of death, very quick, straight up a vein and into the heart, was a dose of cyanide large enough to kill a shire horse. It was, however, disguised as a dose of heroin, cut two or three times and thus of normal, street strength. It's this second part that sticks with him, that rankles. It feels like a taunt. It might have nothing to do with him, but it feels like a taunt.

You see, if you have a man who you can force to go and sit in a seedy hotel alone, you can almost certainly force him to empty a needle into his vein, if he believes he'll survive.

The blackmailer would almost have gotten away with that, you know. To let Forrester live, provided he took that first blissful dose. That, in Holmes' opinion, would be the far greater crime. Not to take a life, but to give a life a taste of utter nirvana which, from the very moment it reached its peak, would be forever fading. He knows that, and knows it all too well. That's why it feels like a taunt. The cyanide was meant for Forrester, yes, but the heroin was meant for him.

Holmes thought the word 'blackmailer' as simply and naturally as the word 'duck' or 'scissors' or 'cake'. Only afterward did he take any notice of it.

The only blessing here is that there are but very few people still alive who know how to taunt him that way. He works through the list, and he works through Forrester's wallet. And in amongst the personal business cards he finds a strange one. It tells him everything he suspected is true, everything he needed to know.

"Milverton", he says aloud.

Molly stops signing and looks up, head leaning on one hand. "Who?"

"Charles Augustus Milverton," Holmes answers, glad of the opportunity to recount the things he knows. "He's not gentry, but he acts it. Wormed his way in early. Used a young girl, as I recall, to do it. Most of the titled-types believe he's one of them, but he's not. No, he's a con man, and specifically, he's a blackmailer. He's got some small interest in a major CCTV provider and a stake in clubs all over London. He finds where the dirt is and he makes it pay, simple as that. He's a vicious brute, but physically he's useless."

"And you think he had something on Forrester?"

"Oh, no doubt, but that's not really the point anymore…"

He stops thinking about the test results, stops thinking about Molly. Pacing the floor. Somewhere very far away, she's asking him what he means. And this, this is just like long ago, before he ever left. He remembers voices coming at him from very far away, while he thought. Remembers Molly's being the sort that didn't really register at all. It registers now, though, he forces himself to let it in, to listen. Learned his lesson about that, learned it the hard way. He wants human voices again. In a way he never thought possible, he wants all the people back.

Moriarty's got four. Milverton is the King of Diamonds and he's one of them. There are three more. Moriarty's got four and it's not fair.

"Impelling suicide," he explains to Molly, because she asked for an explanation and that's what people do, "isn't much of a crime. It's more like bullying. At the worst, it's slander. And slander isn't really enough, Molly. No, it has to be enough, it has to _stick_."

"But it's the truth," she answers. She gets up from her notes and crosses the room. Doesn't stand at his shoulder the way she would have once, but leans instead against the workbench. He wishes she wouldn't. Wishes she would stand where he remembers her. It's not that he wants her closer, it's that he wants her where he remembers. He wants something to be as he remembers, like it might trigger everything that was better and felt better and didn't feel the way he feels now. When Molly stood at his shoulder, then he belonged here. And now she won't do it and he doesn't know what he is. "You were always just in it for the truth, weren't you? The rest is… _extra_."

"No, Molly, you don't understand, it's not safe. Just discovering these people isn't enough. I have to-" He pauses, swallows the lump in his throat, "Have to _fight_."

He's been fighting for a while now. He doesn't blame her for not understanding; she hasn't been there, hasn't seen it. It's okay. He doesn't want her to see it either. Even this much, letting her see what he's turned into, this hurts. He doesn't want her to see the real battle, this bizarre war where one head must be taken before another can be fought.

The fingers of his right hand are clawed inward, and they twitch farther in still, in little double blasts, imitating the beat of a heart, like holding onto a still-beating heart, like showing the dying eyes of the monster its own still beating heart and he wants that beating heart.

Molly breathes in, to speak. She stretches out a hand as if to place it over his. Then the door opens and a third and unimportant voice interrupts, "Dr Hooper? Do you have a second? Your brother's here, he wants to see you."

Her hand retracts again, going quickly to the pocket of her lab coat. Holmes feels it rush away as if it were taking a piece of his flesh with it. He had, on instinct, tucked his head down when the door opened, and he's glad he did. His expression, he feels, would give too much away if she were to look round.

"My brother?" she says. Then, under her breath, "What's he doing here? I'll be back in a minute."

She goes, and he sits desperately thinking of anything but her, her and the other real people that are no longer a part of him.

Milverton. Milverton is no real person. He's a thin runt of a man with a shock of blonde hair, almost white, traces of an American accent, fine white hands like a rich woman's. He first met Milverton when the latter played a scam that resulted in the breaking-off of the engagement between a rock star and a model. These artistic types will tend to feel everything so deeply. If he couldn't have his beloved, that rocker wanted revenge, and Holmes had given it to him, provided the blackmailer and the blackmail material.

But what was that? In the grand scheme, he means, what was that? The status quo stayed broken. The two parties weren't reconciled. Milverton had still been paid. There was never enough evidence to secure a conviction. What kind of vengeance was that for the wronged, and what kind of victory for Holmes? None. And it's not a mistake he intends to make twice. No, he'll find something, find a way, and-

And is interrupted by the sound of bodies tumbling together, by a cry for help and a voice he recognizes. Molly.

He has not forgotten how to help when someone is screaming.

Holmes runs to the hallway. The unimportant voice that interrupted them is impotent, doing no more than look on, bewildered, while Molly is attacked by a middle-aged man with a loaded syringe. He's trying to spike a vein, finish her with it, but her flailing and struggling are putting him off.

Inject. Not 'spike a vein', inject. Inject is the proper term

While his eyes are fixed on the bulging vein in her neck, Holmes steps calmly up behind him. First, for safety, he grabs away the hand with the needle in it. Quick, vicious, shocking, the bone in the wrist seems almost to bend before the grip loosens and the needle tumbles to the floor. Turning on him with pain and fear, Molly's assailant finds a fist crashing into his jaw, throwing him against the wall where he'd pinned his intended victim. Molly yelps and falls away and Holmes knows he should speak to her, wants to, but this isn't the time. This is the time to keep the unknown attacker dazed and his thumb pressed discreetly into the hollow between voice box and collarbone. A single digit is enough to choke the life from a man; he is breathing half-breaths, already feeling the loss of oxygen, and the adrenaline of knowing his life is in danger.

"Talk," Holmes says, and he won't. More elaborately, "Who sent you?" and this too gets no response. And so, Holmes gambles, guesses, "Milverton."

That's a trigger. Hearing the name, thinking this is his undoing and all the answers are known already, the attacker stops struggling and only shakes. "He said this would be it. He said this wiped the slate clean, if I just…" But he's wary of admitting to everything. Instead, he gambles too, looks Holmes dead in the eye and says, "He told me I wouldn't be the only one."

That's too much. Holmes hits him again, and this time with no intention to daze or disable him, only to damage. Once or twice more for good measure. Then, as he stoops to help Molly up from the floor, he tells that hopeless waste of a third voice to call security, and the police, and starts taking Molly back to the safety of the lab.

She's having trouble breathing, seeing straight. Gone pale, shaking. More than once, it's only his arm around her shoulders that keeps her from collapsing entirely. That's a normal, healthy sort of shock, the last reflex of the instinct to run away when running away is denied.

Molly keeps muttering, and yes, he should be listening to her, allaying all her fears and telling her it's fine, she's safe. But Holmes won't lie to her. He can't. Instead, he tells her quietly, confidentially, to wait for the police. To leave him out of it. To go home and stay there. He'll be in touch. If she feels as if she might be in any danger to call him. But that's all he tells her

The rest, the lies and the consoling words, he will leave to others. He puts her down on the stool he found her on and leaves just as quietly as he arrived. She mutters again, stretches out to make him stay, but he leaves. Resolutely, without looking back. She'll gather herself before the police arrive. His name is safe. Now he's walking away again, repaying the favour.

This was all too public to begin with.

He doesn't want to see the fear on her face. Doesn't want to think what might have happened if he hadn't interfered. He thought of all that before he ever returned to London. He thought of it before he ever left.

On the roof of this very building, Holmes knew how to die. But the other people across the city, all with prices on their heads and someone perfectly poised to collect, they had no idea, not a one of them. All these people who would have done anything for him, they were oblivious while he held all the cards he could ever have needed. He hadn't thought of them, not really. All he'd thought of was his own sacrifice, and he had arrogance enough to believe would suffice. He left to keep them safe as much as to stay dead, and he has returned only warily and with every possible precaution.

Except, of course, for Molly Hooper.

He needed her. Not just for her expertise or her laboratory access, but to be normal and perfect and exactly as he left her. To prove, after all he's seen, that there is still goodness here. She has said nothing and still in the process convinced him to return, because a world with Molly Hooper can't be a world meant for punishment, can't be a cruel place at its heart.

And now look. Look what he's bloody done and he's only seen her twice.

It's not right. It's not fair. And it is perfectly and whole-heartedly within the rules of this and any game.

Making charges stick? To hell with that. Milverton should suffer.


	7. The Flop

Exiting at the ambulance entrance, just as a police car screams in, Holmes can't help but have his eye drawn up and over the road. On one of the bollards, the girl is waiting. Or rather, she would appear to be ignoring him entirely, concentrating only on her balance as she first manages to stand up and then begins to lean, raising one leg in arabesques. A roller skate hanging from either hand, frozen black under streetlight like modern art. She probably thinks she's graceful, but she's not. She's like a child pretending to be a ballerina. He rushes across and grabs her down by the waist. She squawks, but there's no let up. He keeps tight hold of her, both arms pinned down against her sides. "What do you know?!"

"Bloody everything, Blondie, so play nice!"

A pause. "Interesting argument." He releases her. She spins away, but she's not used to the flat-footed steps and stumbles. Sits down hard on the pavement and starts strapping the wheels back onto her shoes. He waits, though he knows he shouldn't – they're still far too close to the hospital and the hospital will be full of police and it still has Molly. "So your assistance, as it were, what does that cost me?"

She grins up from the floor. "I wish people would stop talking about money. I'm in this for simple love and devotion. Otherwise there wouldn't be money in the world to keep a girl playing this hard…"

"Tough job, is it?" She holds out a hand, with dirt caked beneath the fingernails. Reluctantly he helps her up. It's only his disgust that makes him pull too hard and brings her against him. She slides away much better this time.

"The _toughest_. I have to know where everybody is, what the plans are, who needs what, I have to be able to provide whatever they might ask me for… London's a big place, Mr Holmes, I'm _knackered_." He starts to say, 'Poor child', starts to pat her arm, but she darts away, steps and steps ahead, screaming, "And would you please stop trying to pick my pocket! That's three since you walked out of there; I'm not thick! I'm the best dip in this city, I'm not _thick_!" Holmes raises his hands, showing empty and harmless before putting them away in his pockets. She's pouting, turning her phone sideways to jam it deeper into her pocket, where it bulges and presses on her and she'll notice any change. But he can wait. Inevitably, she intends to keep appearing. There'll be other opportunities.

"'Best dip in London'? That's quite the title for a young thing."

"I'm not as young as I look. And I had good teachers. Look, did you want to ask me something or not?"

"I did, you haven't answered. Your help; how does it work?"

"Oh, well, it's Texas Hold'em. Or it's _Aladdin_, but I thought I'd stick with the cards, not mix my metaphors. How it works is, you've got all your cards that you've got, and I'm the dealer. And I can put three new cards on the table to help you improve your hand. First one's the flop, then the turn, and then the river."

"But there are two other cards that come first, as I recall."

"Those are your free ones. In case you're going to do something stupid and I have to step in."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I think you'll be surprised, along the line. You are still capable of doing stupid things. Like assaulting a blackmailed assailant in front of a witness you can't control, but I couldn't do anything about that one." He doesn't like that. Doesn't like hearing her talk like that, and about him, and right to his face. Doesn't like the fact that she's right and he rages, struggles to find some way round that. And she watches all of this play out over him like it's pictures in a children's book and smiles, "You and Charlie should get along fine."

It's move on or shatter her face against the brick wall. He compromises; stretches out a foot and knocks a skate from under her, leaves her sitting flat on the footpath one more time. And he doesn't wait for her, walks on still talking while she mutters about childishness and playground tactics, hauling herself up. "I want that _flop_ you were talking about."

"Well, I can give you her number if you want."

"Very funny. I want you to take me to another of Milverton's…"

"Cases. He calls them his cases. I told you the two of you would-" He hooks his foot out again, but she dodges. "Fool me once, detective."

"Oh, I'll fool you more than that."

"Anybody in particular?"

"Dealer's choice. A good one, though, some meat on the bone. And try not to make it much of a cab ride."

"Why?"

"Because you're coming with me and I don't wish to be stuck in a confined space with your particular aroma."

"Did you just say 'You smell'? I mean, all fancied up and public school, but in essence… My _God_, mate, you've lost your touch, something shocking you have…"

"Kindly stop speaking to me when you haven't been spoken to."

"You're speaking to me now." He glares at her. "You're worse than _Him_…" He opens his mouth to follow that line of inquiry, but she closes hers and draws a finger across her lips to seal and button them and will say no more. Even when it comes to the cab driver, she first tries to mumble the address at him through the invisible zipper and then writes it down, refusing to talk at all. Holmes doesn't like it; she makes him conspicuous. He knows that, and he knows that's probably why she does it but the fact is, and this pains him, he needs her. She saves him days and weeks of investigation. She's the cheat he needed, the step to the next game, the potential to be ahead of the crime and the criminals. Put to proper use she does him quite a bit of good indeed.

She sits as far away from him as she can in the cab, sulking. Along the silent way, with the driver's eyes always flicking over to him, something comes out of their conversation before.

"Oi. You. You may speak."

"You could address me, at least."

"I have no name for you."

"Well, I wish you'd hurry up and pick one." And, miracle of miracles, she starts to take her phone out of her pocket. Showing him her contacts, no less. But none of the names make any sense. "It's how I catalogue people, see. By what they decide to call me. It's a bitch having to remember your number."

"I'll be sure to get to work on that… What you said before, about having a good teacher, about being the best pickpocket in the city. Does that mean who I think it means?"

"I can't answer that. You have to tell me who you think it means, then I can confirm or deny."

"Danielle Mies."

"Yes."

"Is she part of this?"

"Are you joking? All day long in her best black thong, detective. She heard your name and… _another_ name and it's like she couldn't keep her tongue in her head anymore." The disciple lifts up both hands beneath her chin, hooked over, panting like a dog about to fetch.

Holmes turns his head away and tells the window, "She's more of a cat person."

After that he goes all quiet again. The messenger, who feels lost and all alone when she's nameless and knows he doesn't like her because he's content to whistle and snap his fingers and know she still has to answer, sinks back into her wordless depression. She could have really helped him, if he'd let her. If he'd just been nice to her she would have done all she possibly could, but he's clearly not interested. That's why she has to keep triggering him, keep throwing him names like John and Mies and _God_, he's easy. He's easy and he doesn't even know it. And she has so, so many more thorns to prick him with. Wishes he wouldn't make her. Wishes he could just be _nice_.

When they reach their destination, she tries to look offended and hurt and sad, tries to let him know what he's doing to her and how hard he makes it for her. He's not paying any attention, though. He's looking at the house, a tall Victorian one, large and curved on the corner of a terrace. Inside it has marble stairs and stained-glass and little patterns in the hallway tiles, but she's not going in to see all that again.

"This is him," she says perfunctorily. "He lives alone and he's at home right now, so you're good to go. Milverton's got him for ten grand a month over a mixed race lovechild."

"What difference does the race make?"

"You'll know him when you see him. He's out marching to keep Britain white every weekend. So, you know, you don't have to feel bad about… _anything_, really. I'll wait out here. I'll watch if I can find a window, that's my job. Other than that, whatever you want to do is in-game and kosher. Alright?"

She follows him as far as the front gate, and beyond that ducks into the shadow of the hedge to look on.

There is a single light still on upstairs. Holmes knocks at the door until that turns into two, until the hall comes up yellow beyond the glass. The man who answers is a squat, fat little silhouette and is bundled immediately back inside. As the door slams too, the messenger, with her breath catching harsh in her throat and her heart excited and erratic, rushes low across the drive and to the living room windows to watch. But everything there stays dark. She sees something move in a farther reach and flies to the other side of the house, but there's nothing to see but empty rooms and closed doors. The gates to the back are almost two stories tall, rusted, dangerous wrought iron, and topped with barbed wire. If she had to she could climb them, but getting back over in time if Holmes decides to take off without her, that would be another story.

She strangles a cry of frustration, flailing instead. Tries to stamp her foot but feels her wheels skid and makes wretched laps across the brick paving, moaning _"Holmes, Holmes, Holmes…_"

He hates her. He must do. And later on when she can't make a full and proper report, someone else will start to hate her too, and she could not bear the wrath of her God. His hatred would kill her, even if he wouldn't do it himself. It's this mad, miserable state of affairs that leaves her still drifting around, great loops and figure eights, leaning onto her outside wheels. It's dangerous and she doesn't care if she falls, if she cuts herself open all over, if her head cracks and she's found dead and He has to get Himself a new apostle. Then He'll be sorry. He won't find another like her.

"I am the archangel made flesh." While she's waiting for Holmes, she stands in the light from upstairs, and with a silver spray can from her little backpack she outlines her shadow, and gives it great feathery wings. Telling herself, "I am the archangel made flesh. I am the archangel made-"

Then the door opens and she rushes to Holmes side, studying him all over for clues, for hints of what happened and how he leaves the door open and notices he's wearing black leather gloves he wasn't when he went inside and when she lifts one up to look more closely she sees the wetness and the trace of colour on the knuckles before he snatches the hand back from her and she says, "Did you get him? Is that blood? Did you beat the daylights out of him? Did you get what you needed? What is the plan, anyway, is he going along with it?"

But Holmes face is grim and set. She follows him down the road, keeping up the barrage of questions, but it's like he can't even hear her. She darts around him, head ducking in and out like a swan's (swans, swans have wings, great white wings like archangels should have) to note the grab-mark on the lapel of his jacket and, when streetlights make his shirt orange and the traces dark, the very fine idea of splatter, of someone breathing through a bloodied mouth. Broken teeth. Oh, it goes right to her heart, gathers up everything in her chest and tugs and she feels like she might disappear in all the joy and the glory of it, and wonders if he's a false prophet to make her feel this way when only one other person ever has. "You're nothing like before," she breathes in awe. "You're not like He warned me. You're not an angel at all. You… You're one of _us_."

He strips off the gloves and hands them to her, "Get rid of those."

"Yes, sir. Of course, sir." The giggling, the animal glee wells up in her, but she's more careful now. More _respectful_, and she fights it admirably.

She pauses to put the gloves away with the spray can. In that same moment, with her a step behind, he's reached the main road and pulled down the first cab to pass. Out here, this time of night, they're all empty. He's in and closing the door, and leaves her knocking at the window. After a sullen, staring moment, he lowers it enough to hear her speak.

"Am I not getting in, please?"

His eyes flick down to her feet. Distantly, disinterested, he says, "You have your own transport."

"You don't know what club Milverton's at."

"I'll figure it out."

And then he goes. Goes and just strands her there. She has to hope he tries the other two places first or she'll never make it in time to see how this one ends. And she was being so reverent, enjoying it so much, but he's gone and abandoned her now and that's not nice. The taxi is far enough gone that he won't hear her, and she screams after its taillights, wordless with rage at first and then, finally finding what she wants to say, "Got your bloody gloves, though, haven't I?!"

A second later she realizes 'bloody' is a joke and calms down enough to laugh at it before she takes off. Time's wasting.


	8. Two Kings

He knew exactly where to find Milverton. All he had to do was look at the different clubs' websites and their various promotional nights. He saw the words 'Saints and Sinners' on one of them and that was game over, mystery solved. Wherever the sinners are, there must be the blackmailer be to watch.

The encounters at the hospital and the townhouse have left him drained. This last scene to play, thankfully, is no battle. Only a declaration, an act of completion and, yes, of victory.

Rather than wait at the door like any other sinner approaching the gates, he goes to the back. Tells them Charlie's waiting for him and the familiar form of the name seems to be a free pass. That is a simple rule; act as though you belong and it will be assumed that you do. He's told Charlie is 'up in the gods' and directed to a VIP gallery over the bar, up a spiral staircase all lit up in white.

Holmes doesn't feel clever for getting in unquestioned so much as he feels vindicated. Of course, what he doesn't know is that Charlie is, in fact, waiting. Had left instructions that the man who came asking was to be admitted and not challenged about twenty minutes ago when he received a breathless phone call from that demonic menace, that _Faith_, that _Angel_, that _Odbody_. She wouldn't give him any details, hadn't the air in her lungs to form more that 'Holmes… coming… ready…', but he feels safe enough. Why, it was only just this morning that everything began; how could it be over so quickly? No, Milverton laid a trap and it would seem that Holmes has wandered right on into it. Wonderful. He'll tell him so with an Old-Fashioned in one hand and a student scarcely-dressed as a devil in the other.

A good evening, he thinks to himself. What was he ever worried about in the beginning? He knew the returning detective would fall for it. That's been his problem, these long years out in the world; he jumps straight to the cut wherever he can. Solve the mystery and be done with it, too absorbed in worshipping his own intelligence to let a small fish go by to lure a bigger one.

People, see?

Milverton knows people.

He stands at the railing and watches Holmes approach. Has his drink and his devil girl brought to him where he stands, and playfully swears the girl to silence, hoping she knows better than to think a joke is just a joke or a game a game. No, not hoping. 'Hoping' would imply there was something to worry about. But there isn't. He knows how to deal with her kind if they get uppity.

If anything were to make him uneasy, it's watching Holmes. He chose the club and chose this particular club because he knew it would be crowded, full of youth and skin and lust and need, and he imagined the detective slinking towards him, uncomfortable, ill at ease, off his guard. What _Milverton_ doesn't know is quite the sort of things Holmes has seen and suffered since London first spat him out. He's thought it more than once since his arrival, and looking around at the thrashing bodies and the wanting eyes and the gleam of sweat he thinks it again; there are no mysteries left for him here.

He climbs the staircase, is admitted at the cord, and crosses to where Milverton is waiting. Takes in his shows of confidence and wealth, the drink and the girl and the damned, hollow kingdom pounding behind him, and sees through it all. Milverton never liked that. Never liked being the subject of a gaze that understands so perfectly every detail upon the instant. That's _his_ job. In turn, Holmes hates to see that hatred coming back at him, because he wants nothing in common with this toad. Nonetheless he smiles, shouts brightly over the music, "Your Highness!"

"Detective. Good to see you again."

"No, it's not."

"Well, pardon me for trying to be civil."

"Don't bother. No point, not in the mood."

"I take it you found my little gift this morning."

"Mmh, it _was_ rather a gift."

"Easy, you mean?" He laughs, "The worst you've brought me is a little bad press. Oh, I'm sure you've got him all figured out. What he did and how I did it, don't you?"

"No. No idea what you might have had on Mr Forrester. Can't say I care either." Which is wrong, all wrong, and Milverton is shaken, momentarily, from his purpose and his cool. But only momentarily. He sees the twitch of a smile cross Holmes' face and straightens himself again.

"Then with all due respect why are you here?"

"To tell you you have lost nonetheless and are done for. I found enough at the scene to connect you to the death-"

"Ah, but you see, coercing one to suicide is no proven crime. Really it's more like playground-"

"Bullying. I know. Forrester probably won't have all that much to do with your downfall. The man at the hospital, though, he'll be in on it. And another."

Milverton tosses his head. This is unexpected, certainly, but not the end of the world, and nothing he hadn't planned for. "If they live to talk."

"If you were free to give the order. If they hadn't been taken into protective custody already." Finally, Milverton stops staring out at his oblivious revellers, and his head whips round to stare. Holmes looks back, but only to nod his eyes back down as the first uniformed police in their yellow coats start to make an entrance. He moves behind Milverton, back to the farther stairwell, where he can get away before the arrests actually begin. Unable to resist he leans close, between Milverton and the now-terrified girl and mimics his RP English. "Time you folded, old sport, don't you think?"

"Wait," Milverton snaps.

"No."

"Yes." From his breast pocket he produces the card, the King of Diamonds, and hands it to him. Wordlessly, disgusted, he hands it over. "They'll never make this stick, you know."

"They will."

He tries once more to walk away. Once more, Milverton lifts his voice to be heard. "Stop and say hello to the Bitch on your way out, won't you? She's so looking forward to hearing from you. Might as well grab her before you become mortal enemies again."

Holmes doesn't stop. Can't. The police are too close now and he's not ready for them yet. But as he dodges the man trying to hold the cord over and starts down the stairs again, he looks out over the club again, more closely now. Mies is here, Danielle Mies, and her job is not yet in progress. They're here, both of them, before the crime, before the fact, level pegging.

But she saw the police arrive. Because he came in and was only looking at Milverton and not at his surroundings, she was there to see the police arrive and him with no idea. She's standing on a raised dais by the DJ booth, in black lace from her toes to her full face mask. A shameless sinner, dark red lips pursing at him just once, and a flash that might be a wink or just the lights playing off the red crystal heart next to her eye. There are police and a mass of bodies between them. She blows that kiss and disappears, into the dark, and thence out a fire door somewhere, because the alarms start and so does the panic, and everything clears but the arrests.

Holmes leaves too, into the cold night, fighting away from the shivering crowd all in shorts and skirts and no sleeves and leaves fast, charging, irritated. Suddenly getting Milverton doesn't feel like very much at all.


	9. The Barbarian Queen

Third date, eighth lay, and Danielle Mies lets her unwitting partner in crime take her to see the diamonds. Trying to impress her. And it works, she's impressed… just not with him. He is the man from the insurance agency, and he has been all too easy. Attractive, yes, but vain and self-important, and distinctly boring in bed.

She has known vain and self-important men before, and loved them, but it was only because they had something there to back it up. This one doesn't. And that last point she made, well, there's no excuse for that. That, Mies cannot forgive. Even if he wasn't in insurance, and even if insurance weren't more mortal enemies to her profession even than the police, she wouldn't feel bad about any of this, and because of that. And God, it's _bored_ her to twitter and smile and let him believe he's really on to something, bored her to give him a very old and well-used speech about how she just _loves_ jewels and looking at them. But nonetheless, here she is and now his part's done with. Tomorrow she can start ignoring his calls. What a blessing.

Today, however, suffice to say that Mies is impressed. The room she is standing in is a showcase in a private home. A collector. Not for the first time, she's glad she doesn't do any of her business face to face – this collector doesn't often care if he can show a piece to his friends or not, and is therefore an ideal buyer for stolen art. If it's who she's thinking of, he's ordered it in on occasion. Once she gets a look at that Constable they passed in the hallway and decides whether or not it's a fake she'll know for sure.

But this is all a digression, and Mies has to concentrate.

The collector in question has some jewels on loan. The story, her temporary accomplice tells her, is that he has borrowed them from a mistress for his wife to wear to the opera. She acts scandalized enough to make him shut up. Under the guise of staring up in awe, she gauges the exact size of the cavernous room to within five cubic feet and studies the window alarms. They're weak, but she knows intentional vulnerability when she sees it. After all, it's one of her favourite tricks. Danielle Mies can break the heel of any given shoe on cue and at a moment's notice, to grab hold of the right arm. Sometimes she can even cry, but that's mostly the loss of the shoes.

No, the windows are a trick, a web for stupid flies. It's the floor sensors she needs to worry about. A swinging system, constantly moving, and the movements random. There's no practicing, only care and absolute awareness. This place is better defended than most museums she's taken on in the past. But possible. Very possible.

The diamonds themselves are on display on blue velvet in a Perspex case. Motion and pressure sensitive, all the usual. They're beautiful, works of art, and she appreciates the quality and craftsmanship of the cut, but stones have never really moved her. Art's a different story. Art's another story altogether, and she can only thank gods and stars and Sod with his law that this collector hasn't seen fit to hang that de la Tour she brought him anywhere along her route. That is, if it's who she's thinking of.

It was a Magdalene, that painting, as she recalls.

That strikes a chord with her, a very distant, faint note of unease. She shakes it off and paces around the case. Tries not to look too directly at the locks and sensors, but she's not leaving without specifications. The act she puts on for her questing suitor can only go so far. There's only so much Mies is willing to fake for any man.

It's hell, she thinks, comparing model numbers with screw heads, but it's doable. The heist forms up in her head, and she gets tired just planning it, but it's going to be a truly beautiful dance. As she eyes the cameras, considering a floor level entrance to be her best bet, she knows she won't be able to reach them, take them out. But that's alright. Let them watch. All of them.

She hopes against hope that Holmes will come to see it.

Following hard on that thought, though in no way connected to it or triggered by it, she decides she probably needs a few hours gym time before it all kicks off.

But she feels a hand in the small of her back and remembers her all too willing tour guide, and why he thinks he brought her here. Tries to remember the diamonds are supposed to be turning her on, tries rechanneling some of her lust for the job towards them, towards him. After all, Mies has her own particular exercise regime, and she's just about finished here. She looks round at him, eye to eye and thinks, to hell with it. There are a few tricks she can show him and she won't have any calls to ignore. She might make him run screaming, just to watch him go.

* * *

They went back to her place. The faithful messenger watched them go in and shuddered, but that's just Mies all over. She just makes the girl not want to be there, not want to exist, want to curl up in a ball in the corner until the bad lady goes away.

She wasn't hanging about.

She took herself across town at an easy pace. Mies keeps a loft not far from her apartment, putatively an artist's studio. Really it's full of gym equipment and empty floor space. There are eight different kinds of motion sensor and fourteen safes and sixty two sorts of lock mounted into boards. The messenger counts them while she waits. It's the practice room, a rehearsal space. She wants to tell Holmes about this. Miss Mies would have some_ explaining_ to do if the cops landed in here. The whole idea makes the disciple smile, and she hates the fact that she can't do anything about it. Can't interfere. Has to do as she's told, just watch and wait. Speak when she's spoken to.

She has her phone in her pocket with another message. Not so nasty as He was about Milverton. It just says, 'Go and see if Dani needs any help.'

_Dani_. All friendly and familiar and all. The messenger wrinkles her pointy nose and looks about all this empty space, all bare and sparse and _hollow_ like her. She doesn't _want_ to stay, doesn't _want_ to help Mies. And she doesn't want to talk to her after knowing what she's been up to all afternoon. Feels filthy just _thinking_ about it. Ick. No, this is a bad idea, she doesn't like it.

She skates around over all those bare floorboards. First one heart shape, and that's the ace, and then two, and then three. And by the time the poor, put-upon apostle has reached the ten, Mies has still not arrived. She stands a while, shifting foot to foot, holding herself, trying to find the courage to disobey. Finally, keening and biting her lips, she takes out her phone and sends a message in response. 'Miss Mies doesn't need me.'

Then shoves her phone into the pocket again so fast it's like it might bite her and flees the room, scatters into the safety of the lift and, as planned, curls in a corner until the ground floor.

* * *

From the comfort of house arrest and frozen assets, Milverton removes the phone he kept hidden when the police stripped his home, swallows back bile and calls the Bitch.

She answers, breathless, "Charlie boy. Heard the news. So sorry."

"You sound busy."

"Not especially." Well. She's hanging off the ceiling holding a medicine ball over her head. Under her head. The semantics are difficult, but the strain on her muscles is the same. She swings the ball into one hand so she can hold the phone against her other shoulder. "So what can I do for you, jailbird?"

"You're not funny."

"No, I'm gloating."

"Don't. That's why I called. I spoke to Holmes last night."

"I know, I saw. He give you the full parlour scene, love?"

"No. And I didn't feel he much cared to either. I called to say… Look, he's not the man that left, alright?"

"Aw, Charlie. You worried about little old me?" He hangs up in disgust and she laughs. Swings the ball hand to hand again so she can zip the phone back in to the pocket at the back of her leggings. Starts curling up again, starting with her arms straight out and curling into a ball at the rafter, then stretching back out. She's got another twenty to go at least. The idea, in fact, of a different Holmes, a Holmes that has baffled Charlie Milverton and left him scared, rather excites her. The old one stopped being fun a good few years before he died.

Caution? Mies goes at her curls with new enthusiasm. "Yeah. Get my _rock_ hard little body on for you, gorgeous. Bloody _better_ come and watch…"


	10. A Marked Card

It is only old, _old_ ideas that bring Holmes to the thief. They seem hazy as things that may never happened, though the time itself, between then and now, is not so very great at all. Why, he saw Mies not four days before he sadly passed away.

She waited for him, at Baker Street, when no one else was home and smoked three of those vile, old man's cigarettes she likes so much. And when John had asked him later if he'd cheated, skipped the nicotine patch that afternoon, he had to say yes. Couldn't explain who'd really brought that stench, what she was doing there. The lie was easier and kinder for all involved.

The smell was intentional. He knew that then and knows it now. She left it behind so he'd remember her, so the nicotine craving would kick in and craving would be matched in his head with her presence. Cheap, vicious trick.

Waiting in her flat, repaying the favour, he smells her cigarettes again. He sets about making coffee, both to mask it and to kill the craving with. Wants to kill the craving because he doesn't want to think about her the way she was before. But he looks around while he waits for the machine to do its work, and this is a mistake, because his hand reaches automatically and entirely without him having to look to the top left cupboard over the sink and finds a mug with the handle turned out and brings it down and he remembers. He remembers everything. Coming here was no good idea.

The flat is small, essentially a hoarder's cave stuffed full of things she doesn't actively want to walk away from. He sits waiting with his back to the iron spiral staircase. The rail is hung with scarves that are meant to be there and underwear that isn't, and at the top there's a mezzanine no bigger than a prison cell and a queen-sized divan. He's seen it all quite a few times and, given the ceiling shows no signs of ever having supported a complex pulley system, has never been able to figure out how the bed got up there.

A long time ago, and his inside left arm was full of tiny, self-inflicted wounds, he lay there too ill to move, and Danielle made soup. Dreams, false memories, they're never that simple. Anyway, he remembers dying, or feeling damned close to it, and strong arms that held him in this world.

Of course she had her own motives for doing it. She must have. 'Selfless' isn't a word that would ever spring to mind.

That day before he died, he'd come home to find her standing near the window, swaying in front of the music on the stand, one finger toying with the tip of the violin bow. She looked caught then, and turned too quickly. Holding herself. The paper rustling in the rush of her turning. Needy and vulnerable and all of this perfectly calculated. That's all that's in her. He forces himself, here, now, waiting for her, _forces_ himself to keep that fact continually in mind. She is a manipulator. The emotions of those around her are her greatest weapons.

Where there are no pre-existing emotions to toy with, she is quite expert in arousing them.

Before he died, with the whole game in full swing, she came to him. And when he asked her what the hell she thought she was doing, she said, "Come away with me."

"I beg your pardon?"

"Or run away with Doctor Watson. Do something, I don't care, just disappear forever and never return."

Oh, God, he wants this to stop. But the memory isn't playing like a video, it all came back to him sudden and perfect, one great gasp, and now he has no choice but to remember. She looked desperate and she'd placed herself in grave danger to even visit. And he, taking her seriously for a moment (like a fool, that's all it was, just foolish, just her wicked mind, that's all), asked what was the matter, what she knew.

"That you're ruining my life," she said. "That you're destroying the only thing I really give a damn about. Do me a favour and just vanish. Or, even better, die in an accident, because that's the only way he gets out of this intact."

That was about as selfless as Danielle Mies ever got.

"Excuse me?"

"You thought the last game was good, this one'll blow your mind. And if you win, it will crush him. And if he wins then… what's left? It'll be Paradise Syndrome and where does that leave him but still crushed?"

"You're not serious." And he started to laugh. It was cruel and it was genuine too. "Dani, have you come here to plead with me for Moriarty's _sanity_?"

The laughter got to her. She broke, said too fast and too loud, "No, for mine! Either way, one of you dies and whichever one, I lose. So if you were to suddenly find yourself in Nicaragua with a new name, that would help me out very much."

Of course, he couldn't help her. And nobody else could either. But that is her own unfortunate casualty; a long time ago, they both chose sides, and knew from there on out they could never exactly expect to _win_ again.

On the bright side, she seems _much_ more chipper today when she comes through the door. She's got high heels on and an armful of shopping bags, and with a smile on her face she crows, "Evening, gorgeous." Like he's meant to be here. That sets him on edge, throws him off replying. She eyes him, tosses her head, "Come on. I knew you'd remember where to find me."

"And how did you know I'd come?"

Laughing, heel-clicking past him to the coffee pot, she slides between him and the worktop, too close before he can step away, a drift of smoke and perfume and, "Ask me _that_ question again in an hour."

"Afraid not."

"Spoilsport."

"Don't you have a job on?"

"Yes, but not until almost dawn, so I've got time." Not the answer he was expecting. For a moment he could almost believe that was a slip of the tongue, but it's too precise a detail for her not to mean it. And when she turns back to him, reaching in just the same way he did for a mug, her eyes are on fire. "It's a diamond job. I'll write the address down for you."

She does it while she settles at the breakfast bar, right opposite him. Beneath, he hears her shoes drop to the ground. A second later her toes ease over and worm under the cuff of his trouser leg, looking for skin contact. He refuses to flinch. Pulls back just as easily as she reached. "Big, film star diamonds," she goes on. "The security's utterly bloody gorgeous, though, state of the art. I wouldn't follow me inside, if I were you. My way out is a work of minor genius and I don't think you'll spot it. I'm not questioning your intelligence, not at all, but you're not a thief. You're not _saying_ an awful lot, dear. Are you feeling alright?"

"What's the game, Danielle?"

"Four of us, one of you. Hadn't you caught that?"

"You're telling me all about your heist. What's _your_ game?"

"Same as anybody. Catch me if you can."

Her smile is rich and unashamed. He knows he shouldn't, understands what's happening to him even as she does it, but he begins to smile back. Begins to enjoy it. Her honesty is a brand new challenge. Her bravery is what he remembers of her when he forgets who she loved and with what devotion. 'Game', he settled before, is the wrong word, and he must be so careful what he allows himself to enjoy. But it's more and more difficult to remember that Molly was almost killed, that Milverton had a victim, that a racist politician is in hospital. She makes it difficult. Somehow, she knows what he truly _wants_ to feel, whether it's true or not. And like a field full of poppies she lulls him, makes it alright, makes desire necessary.

"You're feeling confident," he says, and her foot comes back to his leg. He has nowhere to pull away to now and won't give her the pleasure of making him shift, so he lets it stay there.

"I am. Deeply confident. I'd bet everything I own on it."

That's a trick. A long time ago, in all that far away mess when he knew her before, she told him she didn't consider herself as really owning anything. That no criminal should and a thief absolutely couldn't. A thief must be willing and ready to turn and run at any given moment and leave no regrets to call them back.

"And do you own anything, currently?"

"Nothing I don't carry with me. You know that." She slides two fingers beneath her shirt and produces a playing card from her bra. The Queen of Hearts is a sick joke in her hands, the user, the heart_breaker_. Manipulator. She makes a mockery of sex and a god of pleasure. The only creature she ever could have loved is dead. He reaches out for the card, but she puts it away again. "No. Earn it. Or come round here and get it. You can have it if you come round here and get it." As her hand pulls back it tugs just too hard and the first button pops open. Not indecent, nothing shows, but the act itself is all she needs. Whether she sees any effect whatsoever, these thoughts have crossed his mind. That's enough of an intrusion already.

No. The only way to make a loss certain and complete would be go and get it.

She sees she's not getting anywhere and sighs. Sinks in on herself like she's just heard the memory of a voice calling her, the kind that comes back clear as any new sound in the room. For a moment, it almost looks genuine. If Holmes were the sort to suffer her tricks, this might be the one that would melt him, that would make her difficult to hate the way he needs to. But he knows, forces himself to know, nobody ever sees a real expression on Mies's face. Never did. Not when she'd been beaten and he hauled her to her feet, which happened more than once, that wasn't real. Not when she was alone and never meant to be and only wanted to talk, that wasn't real. Not when he was sick and she pretended, _pretended_, mind_, _to take care of him here.

He can't quite figure out why she decided to fake that. Certainly she's never used the incident against him. She's never breathed a word to anyone so far as he knows. But it couldn't have been real. There is no real Mies. He tells himself that, over and over, like a mantra, there is no real Mies, there is no real Mies, there is no-

"I've missed you, Sherlock."

"No, you haven't. You've missed Moriarty."

"Him too. Him _more_. But I've missed you. I didn't think _both_ of you would end up dead. I thought you'd leave me with _someone_. You do know nobody else has ever been able to keep up, don't you?"

"You're not that bad."

She laughs. Abandons her coffee and stands up. She comes around behind him, and seems only to walk slowly, and yet he can't get away from her. Her left hand trails across from one shoulder to settle on the other, and the right matches it. She leans in, breathing into his ear, "I meant with _you_. Or him, but _you_, gorgeous." He doesn't turn his head, but stretches up, cupping the back of her head closer, fingers weaving into her hair. He feels her smile and go on, encouraged, "I've made you work for it a few times now, haven't I? And you never can catch me. That means I'm faster than you."

"You really _are_ feeling confident."

"And you really can avoid all of this. We don't have to face off at all if I don't have any cards to play."

"And you'll honour that, will you? I play along here and now and the heist's off?"

"I hate diamonds anyway. They're so cold. I'm not about cold. You know that." She breathes against him, repeats this last. The moment her lips brush his neck the fingers in her hair claw shut and drag her around yelping. Just by standing, he presses her back against the counter. She hisses profanity at him for a second or two, but relaxes again. The grip he has on her, to struggle is to suffer. She falls still and cuts her eyes up at him. Waits for him to speak. He knows what he wants to tell her. Says nothing. She watches him a while before she grins. "Charlie was right, warning me. You're right in it now, aren't you? Welcome to villainy, Detective. I've always thought you'd like it here…"

"You're going to prison, Danielle." She laughs, bright and honest. The laughter gets to him and he pulls his arm back, dragging them both up almost standing, before throwing her head away from him. His hand comes back with long black hairs between his fingers, brushes them off on his jacket. Then looks thoughtfully down at where they were. "I know you're very careful, but nobody's perfect. If they get a DNA swab from you, how many crime scenes does that link you to? Ten, fifteen?"

"Oh, more than that, love," she laughs. "Look at me; there's too much of it. I shed like a Persian."

She's confident.

He runs through in his mind all the countries that still have hangings. There are more than he would have originally estimated when he starts adding it up. She must have stolen from one of them. He turns on that thought and heads for the door. "So I'll see you tonight?" she calls after.

"No." Tersely smiling in from the hall, she's watching him go and he lets her, "But I'll see you."

"All I needed to hear," is the basking whisper that follows him out, "All I needed to hear."


	11. All In

Holmes has missed calls. Not that he's been busy, not that he's been away from the new phone. Just that he keeps seeing Molly's number on the screen. He thought of this before. Yesterday morning, between standing over Milverton's victim and talking to the mad disciple.

That was a mistake. He had reached into the right pocket and taken out the wrong phone. And yet, in the usual way, he had been able to find exactly the right number.

The contacts list is an exact replica of his. All the old numbers. All the old names.

That's why he hasn't been answering; he's been wondering how that's possible.

But when she calls back again he knows it's not fair to her. He swallows the dryness out of his mouth and picks up. "Hello?"

"Sherlock, thank _god_. Where have you been?"

"Nothing to worry about."

"Well, where are you, then? What's going on? What about Milverton?"

"Oh, Milverton's sorted. We've moved on now. Mies. A nice easy one, I should think." Absolute silence is her only response. Twenty seconds go by before he realizes this is too, too long. "Molly?"

"You could have told me."

"What?"

"I'm locked in the house waiting for him to send another blackmailed grunt." He's got nothing, or nothing he can say out loud. He wasn't going to let that happen. Surely she knew that? He could have taken his time with Milverton, dismantled him coolly and with all the precision of an autopsy. A live specimen, he thinks, and thinks of the beating heart of the monster. Normally it's a thought that calms him, but from all the way down the line and without a word he can hear Molly's anger. Doesn't know quite what to tell her, when he could have done so much more to the first of Moriarty's lieutenants. Could have let the rest of them know he was coming. Mies would have known he wasn't to be toyed with.

But the moment that mutt was sent after Molly Hooper it was over.

Surely she knows that.

Too long now and he still hasn't found anything to say. She sighs, "Do you need me, then?"

"Not just _now_," he flounders, "but-" But it's too late, and she's hung up. It leaves him irritated, not sure quite what he did to deserve it. And he's getting damned close to the address of Mies's planned heist and has yet to see any sign of her.

She's on that contact list too. Just as 'DM'. In case anybody ever saw it. He never wanted to be an accessory. She's been there for a long time. He stopped calling it a lot of years ago, but it stayed where it was.

'Where are you?' he texts, 'We're well into predawn now. – SH'

'Waiting for you. Find a spot. Recommend centre window, long room, east side of house. Good view of great arse. Xx, DM'

She's still confident. Good. He's glad. It will only make it all the sweeter when he tears her down. He should have done this years ago. Robbed Moriarty of her long before now and had her locked away in some obscure little corner of the penal system where sunlight is a privilege that must be earned.

Mies made him have fun again. Made him forget Molly, if only for a second. She has to learn. Just because something is within the parameters of the game doesn't mean it's fair play. But she'll have time to think about that soon enough.

He takes the position she gave details of. Not for the reasons she gave, but because he intends for her to see him. Right up until the end, he wants to be right there.

She has chosen him the best seats outside the house. His view of her stage is panoramic and complete. Whatever her 'genius' way out must be, there's no way he'll be able to miss it, and once he knows the police can be informed. Holmes looks over the same great room Mies investigated herself. He sees it differently, though. Mies saw security systems designed to be invisible and snares for magpies. Holmes sees evidence before the fact; marble floors mean inevitable shoe prints. One door and windows that open only at the ceiling end means one entrance, one exit. Limits her options severely right there and then. Up in the dark recesses, he can only imagine what sensors and cameras are just waiting for her. The fireplace behind the jewel case, if it has been burned any time in the last few months, will leave a chemical profile all its own all over her. The distance across the floor to the jewel case impedes her timing, and utterly rules out a simple grab.

Mies herself rules out a simple grab.

How she gets into the house without alarms is no concern of his. He waits more patiently now, hands in his pockets, pulling his jacket close against the cold night.

And then she makes her entrance, pulling wide the double doors stage left. Presents herself, looking immediately to where she told him to be. Her face, from the neck up, is wrapped in black, except for the eyes. They smile broad enough for the rest of her, though. He knows what's going through her head when she waves to him. It costs him nothing to wave back. Soon enough she'll know exactly where she stands.

There's one spot, at the back of her head, where the black doesn't quite overlap, and a few dark curls hang stray. An intentional miss. He finds himself curling the hairs from before over his index finger in his pocket before he realizes he was meant to. There's no sense in it, no point at all; she triggered him because she could. He gets ready to report a burglary in progress and trip a window alarm.

Mies kneels in the doorway, unzipping her jacket. From inside, she pulls what appear to be three neon flares and cracks them into life. From the first hint of light, Holmes watches the floor come alive with moving beams fine as thread and too many to count. Their speeds vary, their arcs are random. There are positioned more than two inches off the floor. Like an expert, Mies bowls the first flare along the floor to clack against the base of the display. The precise qualities of the collision tells Holmes the podium is solid and bolted to the floor. _Nailed down_, as it were. The second flare stops halfway between the case and the door. The third is left at the edge of the room. They give a pathway no more than five feet across, and much narrower where the pools of light only just touch. And the beams are moving from everywhere and might cut across at any time.

He almost can't believe she's serious. Like all of this might be a joke, and she's about to produce some much more technical gadget that'll switch everything off and let her walk straight to the diamonds.

But she's watching him. Probably past her own reflection now that there's light in the room. She sees him thinking all of this and smiles. Her jacket comes off in a single flourish. Beneath, her arms and midriff are bare. For the first time he notices that her shoes aren't really shoes at all, but the sort of cotton glove worn by certain martial artists. The flat leather sole leaves no distinguishing print, on marble or anything else. With her head wrapped up, with her skin gleaming pale and a tattoo writhing on her back, there's something exotic about her now and yes, yes, he believes; her path across the room really is that snake pit, lit up in neon green.

She braces in the doorway, raises her first foot. Holmes catches himself holding his breath and doesn't even have the heart to be angry about it. He can't do anything about her yet. For now, he might as well enjoy the performance.

In order to watch her entire path, she must keep her eyes up. Not only does it give her her periphery, but she can see the reflection from behind her in the Perspex case. The light from the flares gives her that as well as the threads.

There's no hurry, no rush. With her chin up, she picks her steps carefully, with perfect timing. She plans steps and steps ahead, and more than once is almost caught by a beam that wasn't there before, but in graceful steps she evades them, every time. Holmes watches the rise and fall of her ribs and it never quickens, not with fear and not with effort. A thread stretches as if to wrap both ankles and she hops forward and over onto one hand. Hangs like that while she finds a place to put her feet down. She wouldn't appear to have so much as broken a sweat.

This isn't all for his benefit. He's not so arrogant as to believe that. This is Mies' kick. She's not taking on this system just so he can watch, but because she knows she can do it. This is personal. In a way, he understands that. That's why he allows her to have this first part all to herself, before he begins any interference.

She enjoys it. That's what makes her such an elegant dancer.

But as she gets close to the case, she loses a little of her rear view. He sees the pair of beams that cut across her path behind her, sees them cross over, before she does. They are ready to capture her perfectly before she sees them.

Holmes watches her gasp and leap. She jumps directly to the case, to the bolted pillar, clinging like an animal to the side of it. She hangs not millimetres above the beams before she inches upward.

Finally, a breath shudders out of her. He breathes out in sync and hates himself for it.

Wriggling, Mies edges around the case. She climbs as close to the Perspex top as she dares, then wraps her legs even tighter around and her arms let go. She folds back, a single perfect arch placing her hands inside the fireplace.

No beams in fireplaces. Too much can fall down out of chimneys, cause false alarms. False alarms get expensive with the security companies already running expensive systems like this. Shoving off the case, her feet flip back to join her.

Now she's back to her original plan, but on the wrong side of the case. The foot or so of space between her and the diamonds is not illuminated. He can tell by the way she shifts her feet, how she steels herself, that this wasn't what she wanted. Of course, she's not deterred.

Mies turns a standing jump into another dive. This time, she has to grab the pillar with both hands and keep her feet up and away. She has to miss the Perspex box with its pressure sensor.

In competition, even at the very highest of levels, she could never do this. Nobody could. Even when she rehearsed it, she couldn't do it. But this isn't a rehearsal. This is her life, and this is what her life depends on. Mies catches either side square in both hands, held up by pure friction and only the edges of her thumbs hooked on the corner. For the first time, he sees a tremor in her muscles as she slowly, torturously, raises her legs to straighten out her body above the case.

Now he takes out his phone, dials 999, thumb hovering over the green button. But he wants to see how she gets around the pressure sensor.

The answer is very slowly. The thumb that appeared to be supporting so much of her weight starts to work in beneath the clear edge. Holmes looks on with distaste; this won't work. She'll tip it over. It'll hit the floor, trigger the beams, bring everything down around her. She'll never make it out of the house. In his disgust, he calls emergency services, requests the police.

He's giving the address when her hand goes too far, as he knew it would. But the next move is perfect. The hand that seemed to be undoing her flips and holds the corner of the pillar; the other pulls free completely and catches the box. Her feet swing down out of the air, arcing round to miss the lasers and brace her against the pillar before she can fall. Enough of her weight is held on the first hand to replace the box, to keep the sensor happy.

She lays the box across her thighs, reaches up for the diamonds. The necklace disappears through the join between her top and the wraps around her neck. Gently sliding her hand away, she replaces the box.

She looks around at Holmes. One free hand salutes him. She's glittering, all on fire, alive with it. He smiles and shows her his phone. Though he can't see her face, she throws back her head and he knows she's laughing.

After all that, she drops off the pillar, with no care for where she puts her feet.

Alarms go up, lights come on.

Holmes pulls back behind the pillar between the windows. She is climbing to her feet on the hearth, and sees him. Teasingly, she produces the diamonds again and fastens them around her neck, before taking an exaggerated theatrical bow. Already there are sirens coming. There's a suggestion of red and blue lights.

Down at the far end of the room, where she entered, the homeowner appears with a five-iron, come to see what's going on. Holmes only looks at him for a moment before he dismisses him as unimportant. But that moment is long enough for the other man to sense something. He looks round and Holmes stands perfectly still with his back to the stone. For less than two seconds.

When he looks back, Mies is gone.

The rest is a circus. He looks in on police rushing the scene, bad detective work going on and it's hell. They're getting it wrong and there's nothing he can do. Hiding, ducking, he looks at the room from every possible angle, trying to see where she disappeared to, and _how_.

And it wasn't the fireplace.

Santa Claus doesn't come down chimneys and Danielle Mies didn't go up one. It's not possible; since the Victorians there have been measures against such an obvious method of intrusion, and the flue in a room so well protected as this one would almost certainly be closed and locked. And even if all that were _not_ true, the space is so confined and so polluted she would almost certainly have suffocated before she reached the top. He saw her outfit and there was no place on it for an oxygen tank.

He watches and wonders and gets more and more frustrated, until torch beams start to sweep the grass around the corner. Then he has to go, reluctantly begins to run. Another beam ahead cuts him off and he has to stop, has to rethink.

A white hand streaked with black wraps around his arm. A strong body guides his away across the lawn and inelegantly beneath a hedge into a service yard. Bins and scrap, a rusted old van. The hand is Mies's. The black on her skin is soot. She leads him running into another shadow, a darker corner, a further exit.

All intentional, of course. Forcing him to follow her into the dark, forcing him to accept her assistance, forcing him to be saved.

Beyond that gate she stops to take the wraps from her head and bursts grinning into the night, shaking her hair down. "Oh, _what_ a night, gorgeous, what a night…"

"No," he states simply. "This is a trick. The fireplace wasn't the exit."

"No, dear. That room has only one entrance and exit if you discount the windows."

"You didn't use the door."

"I did. How dare you call me a liar. I don't do that. Everything else, but not that." Now she's breathing heavy. Now she only speaks in brief, staccato sentences. Now her eyes are rolling and she keeps touching her face, the diamonds about her neck. "It was beautiful, wasn't it? I mean, they'll be talking about that, won't they? Little thieves will dream about the Mies diamond job?

He grabs her by the blackened shoulder, "You did _not_ use the door, I was _watching_."

"Here's a riddle for you; complete the famous rhyme. _Missed me, missed me, now you've got to_ - ?"

"Explain yourself."

"Spoilsport. Anyway, you were looking. That's different. When you're looking for one thing you're not seeing everything. You were peering at windows for a good minute and a half. The forensics hadn't come in from the van. The lead detective took the collector outside, given he was so upset." She giggles, "He was crying and everything, did you see him? I was hiding in the fireplace. I only had soot on my shoes so I took them off and just walked. I came out the back door, the old servant's stairs. They'll get me when they watch the CCTV. It's going to be so much fun. I'll be on the news and everything…"

He stares at her. It's all wrong. She walked in front of him. She's telling him she walked in front of him.

He looks down and her feet are bare.

"Told you," she says. "You wouldn't think of it because you're not a thief. A thief knows all you have to do is not be seen. A detective naturally thinks differently. A detective thinks of the tops of the windows." His grip on her shoulder is getting tighter, beginning to shake. She pulls away from him, and with force. "Don't concentrate so hard next time. You're missing the bigger picture." She turns her back and starts away from him, running down a road with no streetlights, and he doesn't know where it goes.

All intentional, of course.

As she disappears, she turns again. "Listen, I'm in a good mood, so I'll give you one more chance. The rocks don't leave London for another twenty-four hours. Get them in that time, we'll call it the win, okay?"

His hand, where he grabbed her, is dark with soot. He tries brushing it off but it only smudges.


	12. Nothing Up My Sleeve

The monster is raging. Thrashing its heads and tails, pounding craters into the ground with its enormous feet, legs like sequoias, he sees it all and doesn't even have to dream. Sees it and knows it, the monster throwing itself around in brute pleasure with its heart burning out in its chest. He had it. God's sake, he _had_ it. All the advantage he could ever have wanted, Mies spread in front of him like a banquet, everything but the four and twenty blackbirds, and he _missed_. The heart was there. The heart was exposed and waiting and he couldn't even take the requisite head. She gave him _everything_ and was able to distract with… with _gymnastics_. All her confidence, all her bravado, based simply on the fact that she knew he would _watch_. And now this, this ever-so-gracious second chance she's deigned to give him, _damn_ her. Damn her, and to hell with anything she might ever have meant or done. Mies started shoplifting age fourteen. He'll see to it every possible charge since that very day is brought against her. She'll never know freedom again.

Someday when he's back he'll visit her in prison and look her in the eye, far in the future when it's left her limp and broken.

He thinks of nothing else. Broken hearts and dead, defeated eyes. Somehow, he's still finding his way back into darker, noisier streets that the one lit up with police lights. Staying in the shadows, passing where anyone who might notice knows better than to see. His steps take him where he's going. Not thinking. Not needing to. His next move will mean announcing himself to someone other than Molly. An hour ago it would have been unthinkable. Now he doesn't need to think about it.

He finds himself stopping at the front door of a pawnbrokers', tucked down a mews in the dead streets that edge Soho. It's another old memory, but there isn't room for it, and he doesn't have to remember. Raps sharply at the door where the chipped and fading gold letters read, 'Archibald Slope and Sons'. That helps. That almost draws him out of the mad half-dream.

Archibald Slope had the door lettered, the sign hung over the window, before he ever had children, in hope and anticipation. He ended up with three daughters and drove the first two away, to Ireland and Australia respectively. All of this he learned from the third daughter.

He raps again, knowing he's hours ahead of opening, that anyone upstairs is asleep. Raps louder this time. Waking himself as much as them. A third and a fourth time, he raps.

Eventually, it's not the third Slope daughter that appears. Another young woman who still looks a lot older than Holmes recalls, swinging a fire iron, comes down the stairs inside yelling, "Whatever bleeding drunk or junkie's outside that door better be running and get gone before I reach him, that's all I'm saying, just a _friendly_ warning-" Her friendly warning gets cut off when she gets close enough to the door to see him. She reels and stumbles, falling backward. "Sweet child Jesus and his blessed mother!"

"Just let me in, Emily," he replies, "I can explain." Explain quietly, and inside, where it's dark and nobody will be drawing half so much attention.

But the girl is scared, yelling back towards the stairs, "Mag! _Mag_! I think it's for you…" Still sitting on the floor, Emily crosses herself twice and begins to pray, "Angels and ministers of grace defend us…"

It's not from any catechism. It's from _Hamlet_. A prayer against ghosts. Under other circumstances, Holmes might almost laugh. But there's too much of this waiting, and not all the conclusions people jump to will be so hopeful or kind as young Emily's. That sobers him enough to wait in silence.

A much older woman than Emily heaves herself down the stairs. Margaret, Mag, the third Slope daughter. A pawnbroker like her father, a watchmaker like few others have ever been. And a favourite fence of the criminal classes, though Holmes usually made a point of not pulling her up on that. She's been too useful to him.

It flashes across his mind, just the beginning of a theory, that maybe he came here because Mag had been useful to him the same way Danielle Mies had, and unlike Mies has never given him reason to distrust her. But he puts it from him so that he can concentrate. So that he can speak about difficult things with clarity and honesty.

Mag doesn't quite echo Emily's overreaction. She's much more practical. Before she stops to ask anything, of him or God or anyone, she spends a minute undoing the locks on the door and lets him in out of the cold morning. He steps in and tries to say hello, but she shakes her head. Picks her way across the crowded shop like he's supposed to follow. "Em," she barks, "Get up off the floor and lock up again."

Emily does as she's told, but does something else first. As Holmes passes she reaches out and pinches his ankle. He winces. "What?"

"Bloody hell," she mutters, looking down at fingers stunned to have found solid flesh.

"_Em_," Mag snaps. "Ghosts get whiter. They don't tan. Now get up and make yourself useful."

She rounds the counter, still leading, and with Holmes still feeling he has no choice but to follow. This, he's deciding, will probably be the best way to deal with his return. Say quiet, play the part that an individual's reaction requires him to play. He imagines Mag's equanimity will be a rare pleasure when those days come. He imagines there'll be a lot more crying. Shouting. Probably a few like Emily. Probably a good deal of punching. That alright, he can take the hits. For this, he can take the hits.

But all that happens now is that Mag leads him into her workshop, the repair room behind the counter, puts him down in the armchair and perches up on her accustomed stool. She's got an arch to her shoulders now from leaning over the workbench too many years. Where the wrinkles are starting to show in her face, they hitch around one eye where she's been holding the little magnifier since her father first taught her the difference between diamond and moissanite. She looks older and he knows he does too. But she stares at him in silence for just a moment, eyes working him over, deciding if he is, in fact, who he hasn't had a chance to say he is. Then, "What?"

He tells her only what it is necessary for her to know. "…Faked it."

"Yes, thank you, I had gathered as much, but-"

"I can't tell you why."

She shakes her head. Greying at the temples. Why can't he stop thinking about these little facts of ageing? "I don't care why. I was going to ask you what you were doing back." He smiles, just at her practicality, her way of cutting to the core. "I don't see what's funny." Holmes straightens his face. He's always felt like a scolded child in front of her. It's all to do with old stories and how they met, and the kind of person he was then. That's the part he's not remembering, though. She sighs, rolls old crackles out of her neck. "Does anybody else know?"

"No."

"So nobody would be any the wiser if I were to strangle you where you sit?"

"There are certain people who know." Over her shoulder, Emily appears hovering at the door, eyes wide as an animal's, still clutching the poker. Without even looking, "Emily Jane, put your eyes back in your head and go and put the kettle on."

"But I don't understand," Emily murmurs.

Mag waits until she goes anyway, then admits, "Neither do I. No, actually, matter of fact, I understand quite a bloody bit of it, but I don't like it. Because if this is all so top secret, then you must really want something to have come here. I understand that part, don't I?"

Biting down shame and sheepishness, he tries to be brutal. Tries to be the way he was when London was behind him, to stay _dead_, but it's harder now. He forces eye contact, says, "Yes," but he can't make it any more urgent than that. Out in the world he would have torn her to pieces now. She would already have been sworn to secrecy and now he would be hanging every sin of her life above her head like a sword, and all of them to come down in accordance with his will should she fail to comply, but this is different. He's had to come here and tell her he was alive. It makes a difference to her. It's a while since it's made a difference to anybody.

She shakes her head, considering it for long, long minutes. Then Emily comes in with the tea. Her hands are trembling, rattling the mugs on the tray as she puts it down on the workbench. She turns her head to Holmes but won't lift her eyes, hides behind her hair. "I forgot how you take it. Is that really bad? That one's just black but I can fetch whatever you-"

"It's fine," he says. An instinct he doesn't recognize reaches out and places his hand around her wrist. In response to contact, she does exactly what Molly Hooper did and throws her arms around him.

"I knew you never done it," she mutters, crushed against him. "I knew you never done none of what they said. I told everybody and nobody was listening. But I knew, I always knew it, I never thought different, not for one second."

He sits there stunned, assimilating the only reaction he hadn't foreseen. This lingers for another long few seconds, and he breathes, can barely breathe, "Thank you," before Mag snaps her name again. Emily jumps to attention, folding her hands behind her back like they've been naughty.

"Go and get ready for work," Mag goes on.

"But it's only half-six."

"Not for the shop, Emily." A series of glances confirms all the details of the conspiracy. Emily slips out of the room again without another word, nodding dutifully to Holmes. _Yes, sir. At your service, sir_.

When she's gone, Mag looks at him, with the same awful combination of willingness and chill that Molly had for him, "What do you need?"

"There's a set of diamonds. They're leaving the country in the early hours of tomorrow morning. Or, more accurately, they're not."

She pulls a scrap of paper out of a mess on the workbench and hands it to him with a pencil. "Can you tell me where they went missing from?"

"I can go one better. I can tell you the name of the thief."

"That's good."

"Danielle Mies."

"Not as good… That's a different level to me altogether. That's international work. They've got their own people."

"I'm not asking you to get them, Mag, just find out _where_."

"Mies know you're after her?"

"Mies fired the starting pistol."

"Then you're not safe." He hasn't been, not this long time, but he can't bring himself to tell her that. Or that it doesn't matter. Or about the humiliation of the heist, about beating hearts and broken eyes, about diamonds and Mies and monsters and hearts and Molly Hooper and Milverton and none of it, so far, matters. He goes too long without an answer. Whatever Mag reads on his face she starts to look resigned and nods. "Go," she says. "Leave your number. Em'll give you a buzz soon's we have something."

He stands, starts to leave.

"And Sherlock?"

"Yes?"

"After this, you don't ever darken my door again. And you stay away from my girl, alright?"

This, this is easier than the hug, than Emily's belief. He knew this would come. "Yes."

[A/N – Mag and Emily first appeared in a one-shot tale called Like Cogs, That Turn Each Other, by the same author, for anybody who wants an extra scrap of history.]


	13. Hearts

He brings Molly lunch at work. Couldn't really think how else to approach her. He checks around for students first. Not in his own defence, but so as not to interrupt her. He comes cautiously, and with his simple offering in a brown deli bag, trying not to do anything more to upset her. He remembers she was upset, and not understanding why. He remembers knowing exactly what to say, but he doesn't anymore. All he can do is edge up to her, clear his throat.

She jumps, gasps. It pains him to see it, because he knows what she's thinking of. That attack was his fault. The state she's in, scared of the shadows, that's his fault too. He drops his eyes, steps away from her. "Sorry. I… I brought you lunch, that's all."

"Nice of you to think of me," she replies, very cool, but she takes the bag from him. So not thinking of her must have had something to do with why she was upset.

"I… Last night, on the telephone-"

"I know. I hung up on you. I didn't mean it."

"No, I was short with you. I… It's not an excuse, but I was waiting for a thief."

"A thief?" she balks. And now she's not only holding the paper bag but unrolling the top of it, and exploring inside with one hand. Accepting the gift, or maybe just hungry. But she's watching him now, and she's interested, drawn. "You don't mean the diamonds, do you?"

"How did you hear?"

"It's _everywhere_. It didn't make the papers until the late editions, but it was on the radio first thing and it's all anybody's talking about. Apparently the thief just walked out past them all."

"Mmh, out the back door…"

"And right into you, I'll bet." She's almost smiling now. He can sense her forgiveness, and knows that's the first thing he came here for. But the nerve is still very, very raw. She's enjoying it so, waiting for him to tell her what he did, how he won. Maybe, though, she sees his jaw clench, and changes her mind. "No. Sherlock?"

Seething, full of Mies' grin and the creature's joy, he tells her, "I have to find her, Molly. Today. I have to find her."

"Come and sit down," she says. Pulls him round the corner where he won't be seen from the hallway. Where, if he wanted to, he could lift his head, stop glaring at some empty spot between his eyes and the floor and talk to her properly. But he doesn't look up. Her hand has stopped fishing around in the bag. She puts her lunch to one side, in fact, and a dim, distant part of him wonders if that means anything. "What happened, what's the matter?"

"I had her," he begins. "Actually had her, had a hold of her and-" And here he looks down at his hand, where he grabbed her by the shoulder. Where he should have just dragged her back and shoved her in front of the police, but then that's not a real win, is it… Looks down and in the lines of his palm, under his fingernails, there's still a trace of black soot.

He gets up quick from where Molly sat him down and goes to the nearest sink, throws the hot tap on. Molly's calling for him to be careful, that lab water is boiling, and yes, he winces, draws back, from the first of it. But skin's an odd thing. It knows when it's being tormented and switches off. He can't feel a thing except that he's scrubbing. Little rolls of the blackened skin form up and drift away. Molly pulls his hand back from the stream and turns the tap off, but only because she doesn't understand. He stretches out his hand and shows her, "Look. Look what she left me with."

With cool water and a clean cloth, she sits down and starts to clear away everything that's left him so agitated. "What do you need me to do?" she says.

He opens his mouth to tell her, but stops. Thinks of Mag. _Glad you're alive, of course I'll help, never come near me again_. "Molly, why are you doing this?"

"Because you were scalding yourself."

"Not that, _this_, all of this, helping. Why would you help?"

"This is how you come back, isn't it?"

He could answer that. He could try and give words to what it means to him. He takes his hand, and the cloth, away from her. Sits down and keeps cleaning. "Medical records."

"What?"

"I need to find her before she takes the diamonds to whatever drop Mag manages to find, intercept her between safe places with the stones on her."

"Who? What are you talking about?"

"Never mind all that. The address she uses for any official purposes will be different to the one she lives at and that's where she'll hiding a diamond necklace worth more than this building. I need you to help me find her medical records."

"What makes you think they'll be under her real name?"

"Oh, they won't. But I know her aliases. There are a number of them, but I think I'll be able to find her. There was a gunshot scar on her stomach, and quite a large one, that wasn't there before, and none on her back, so it had to be dug out. No criminal sawbones would have attempted it. They'll have noted down her tattoo, the small facial scar. Dental work's recognizable. If you can give me access I think I can find her."

He's been talking quickly, thinking it through. He outlines everything for her, not because she needs to know but because it calms him to tell it. Now he looks up. Molly's staring at him again. Something close to guilt fires through him; he's upset her again. Every time he opens his mouth, he upsets her. She's the only one still with him and he keeps managing to upset her. "Sorry," is instinctive. Then, in the interests of rationality, "What?"

"Nothing," she says. Far too quickly. She's realized she was staring and cuts her eyes away. Tries to smile through it. "You've done a lot of research."

"What do you mean?"

"Somebody like that must have a lot of fake names on the go, down the years. And you know them. That's all."

"I knew her before," he explains. It's as much explanation as he wants to give.

Very quickly, painfully quickly, "And dental records? I mean, how did you find out where her fillings are?"

He's not coming back here. After this one. They'll have to put him on the slab to bring him back to Molly Hooper again after this. Not because it's difficult for him or because he doesn't like the questions, not because she so often leaves him with no real way to explain himself, but because it's not fair to her. Someday when he's alive again, maybe. But not like this. This, he realizes, with absolute clarity, is a cruelty. It's a damned awful thing to do and he's not coming back. Today, now that he's here, he'll do it to find Mies, but he's through with using Molly.

As has happened to him before, he thinks the word 'using' before he realizes that it's right.

In the end, he manages to smile. "She yawned, Molly."

"Oh."

"And before you ask, I first saw her stomach, sans gunshot wound, when she was hanging from the upper edge of a window I was standing at. It was an impromptu heist, and she wasn't dressed for it."

Molly smiles. "There's a story there, I'm sure."

No. There could be, if she'd give him a second to make one up. For now, it's just something quick, and to appease her.

His lies are kind.

"Maya Dart," he says, starting to rhyme off Mies' aliases, "Alice Ayers. Joan or Joanna Darcy. Charlotte Stendhal-" From writing them down, Molly looks up like she's heard that somewhere and can't quite place it. He doesn't stop, doesn't give her too much time to think about it. "Grace Kerr. Elena Arthur. Maya Arthur. Daniela Artura-"

"Who's Arthur, then?"

"Her father. Well done, Molly. Eva or Evelyn Corso. Gertrude Kuntz…"

"Beg pardon? Can you spell that?"


	14. Jack Of All Trades

All this talk of ghosts has put the angel messenger on edge. It might just be Miss Mies' influence, but she's heard it said that the devil may take on any shape he wants. Or, more specifically, any shape _she_ might want. And the messenger never wanted anything more than she wanted her god returned to her. Do it to tempt her, to damn her, and to make her a heathen for daring to believe the lie.

So when she gets another message, it makes her wonder. It says, 'Go and get Morgan in it before His Majesty gets Dani. I need her for the end.'

She's going, already, she's on her way, but she messages back, 'Are you real? Sorry.'

'Are you questioning me?'

'Sorry.'

'Do you need to stick your hand in the wound?'

'Really sorry.'

'Aren't you my angel?'

Her heart is beating out of her chest, and not with the effort, not with the breakneck pace. No apology is going to be enough. She stops trying. Cries quietly to herself along the road, choking on it. Thinks of the orders of monks that whip themselves and how she always thought it was stupid, but she understands. When you truly love and adore something and you do it wrong, you feel that way. She scratches fiercely, right thumb nail tearing at the heel of her left hand, just inside, just above the wrist. It's not enough, but it's something. She wants to tear all the skin she's ever had away and leave every nerve exposed because He hates her.

'Aren't you my angel?' comes again.

'Best always angel. Forgive me.'

'Go and get Morgan.'

Yes. Absolutely. Without question and with her whole brutal heart. She can be perfect. There's no devil on the far end of her phone, there never has been. The only devil is Holmes. Holmes made her question. If her God wants Miss Mies free and clear, that's exactly what He'll have. Her own fears and hatreds aside, the messenger will provide her.

She dries her eyes at the door of the dark, narrow whiskey bar Morgan hides himself in. It couldn't be long after opening, but these places don't change. Closing time is just a clearing out and opening time is just a sweeping in of all the same faces and needs. She charges inside, despite the protests of the barman and the patrons. They are uniformly male and middle-aged and depressed, and she is none of these things. A little girl to them, she's enraged, and her eyes light on Angus Morgan.

The giant is huddled in a corner, and looking incredibly small. He has buried all his confusion and disbelief in malt and turned it maudlin.

The first barfly who tries to put a guiding hand on her, she scratches. The second she bites. Then crosses the room, grabs Uncle Angus by the upper ear and hauls him up. Held this way, to follow her, he's bent double and can't look up. It's only slowly that he recognizes her. "Aw, Jesus, not you. Not you… I don't want to. I've changed my mind."

She's dragged him outside by now. When he decides to stand up, she has to let go of his ear or be lifted right up off her feet. Instead she braces one foot against the wall and hops up to slap him. The sting itself doesn't even register; they say Morgan hasn't a nerve left in his skin that hasn't been cut and burned and overloaded out of all use. It hurts her more than him. But he knows she did it and stares down at her.

The messenger isn't intimidated. She fears no evil, for the very worst of it is wrapped around her as armour.

"You used to be loyal," she says, and spits at his feet. "And what else has He ever asked of you?" Her leg snaps out, delivering a vicious little kick to his shin. This is her self-hate, this is her flagellation. This is everything she was made to feel as she steps in and beats at his chest. Both fists look small as apples battering him, but she _means_ it, and Morgan stands stunned. "And you're going to stand there and tell me you've changed your mind?" she screams.

Morgan, it would seem, has had enough. He's too drunk and she's too strange, too much like something that could have crawled up out of his personal sickness. He takes her by the wrists, puts her to one side and begins to shamble away. He rolls from foot to foot like a man at sea. From practice, he knows it's the best way to stay on his feet. Given his size, a fall can be a catastrophe.

The messenger watches him go, just a few steps.

All her rage, at herself, at Holmes, at Miss Mies and the indifference of her most beloved god for whom she would do anything, boils up terrible. There at the top, there's sudden clarity. All the things she knows about Morgan arrange themselves so that she can see them properly and select one. Calvinist, isn't he? Justified sinner? A man without the hope of redemption grained onto his soul, not like her God's lapsed Catholicism. No vindication, like Milverton, with his adoration of his riches. No wild, atavistic abandon like Miss Mies, whore of Babylon, animal queen.

No, Morgan's different. Morgan's a drifting soul. She looks down at the damage she's done to her wrist and hand, the blood beading up against the new rawness and she knows what he needs. Knowing what he needs, she knows what to give him to make him work for it.

She's not screaming anymore. She slips up behind Morgan, keeping time with his sailor's walk, content to follow. She circles and darts around his feet to make him stumble and reel. Not screaming anymore. Hissing, like a voice from down inside him, "You're pathetic. I think you can see that, can't you? I think you're a little bit lost, Angus Morgan. But don't worry. Don't worry, we'll get you sorted. _Give a little whistle,_ Angus." And she does, just to show him, just to teach. "_Give a little whistle_ and we'll get you back on your feet again. Don't worry."

He's shaking his head, just barely believing in _her_, never mind that more important other.

"You have to let me help you, Angus. I know where you're meant to be. You _do_ have a purpose; you've just lost sight of it. You're still in His plan. He knows you're scared, but you're still loyal. Anyway, it's a nice job. You'll like it."

She slides beneath his arm. On the way she takes hold of his hand. It takes both of hers to even lift it up. Leans back on it and lets her wheels bear her backward. She knows where she's going, and to hell with anyone else who can't get out of her way. She sways like a charmed snake, singing softly, "_Take the straight and narrow path, and if you start to slide, give a little whistle… give a little whistle… And always let your conscience be your guide_."

Incredibly delicate. Not berating him anymore. In his soused mind this is enough of a reprieve already.

For a great huge brute, Morgan's weak. He disgusts her, just a little. Not in the fearful way Miss Mies does, either. She would never take Miss Mies by the hand, for instance. No, her disgust with Morgan isn't physical. She just doesn't like him. Doesn't like his attitude, how much encouragement he needs. Even Charlie Milverton was already working when she got there. He might not have accepted the truth yet, but he was ready to act anyway. Morgan's too dependent, too willing to be led. Maybe she should try reporting that, next time her God is in touch. But then, He would know all this already.

He sends things like Morgan to try her. And she's done well. Morgan's starting to follow her swaying. Drunkenly, breathily whistling. And where she pulls him, he's going.

It's not very far. Just enough or the cool air to sober him a little. Just enough that, when they get there, she can haul herself up, using his shoulders like a ledge, and whisper his orders in his ear. Hanging on his left, her right hand tiptoes up along the bizarre, shatter-glass scars that crisscross his head, fingers curling the gingery tufts of hair. And he's willing now. He's accepted her. Letting her conscience be his guide, he listens intently to the simplest sort of contract.

"Destroy it," she tells him. "And the woman too. Your God watches over you."

"Does He?"

"Don't doubt Him. He looks upon your great works and smiles. Do what thou wilt."

Morgan's conscience falls down off his left shoulder and gives him a last gentle shove in the direction of the door. The door is dark and discreet. The windows are screened with wire mesh. In gold, painted on the glass, it says, 'Abraham Slope and Sons, Quality Pawnbrokers, Est. 1952'


	15. Clubbed

In the lab at St Bart's, it is almost like before. Holmes still works with silent intensity, tucked in a corner out of the way. Molly still glances over at him periodically, thinking he isn't paying enough attention to notice. But her gaze is not quite the same. It's no longer idiotic, or baffling, or even involuntary the way it used to be. Now she's keeping an eye on him.

He still has the cloth beneath his hand, pressed against the countertop. It's damp and soothes the pains of the scalding. That's what she's watching. Under a calm, rational light, subjected to a certain amount of retroanalysis, it was perhaps something of an overreaction, to boil off a faint trace of soot smut. But Molly wasn't there. He had a handful of Mies's hair, holding her down to a breakfast bar, and she was saying, 'Welcome to villainy'. And Mag was telling him never to darken her door again, to stay away from Emily. He had Mies by the shoulder, laughing at him, _Miss me, miss me_, and when she pulled away he let her go. Molly's worried, but if she _knew_, if she'd _seen_ it all-

She wouldn't be here.

He tries to believe. If he's doing the right thing there's no reason for Molly to ever turn her back on him, no need for her to lock the laboratory door and call security. He tries to believe and squeezes harder on the cloth, feeling only Mies's hair, the warmth of her scalp, and the strength and power that came out of holding her there. He tries to believe and only hears it again, "Welcome to villainy."

He's on the fourth Maya Arthur and trying not to hear anything. Everything drifts, watery. The next thing that makes it through is Molly's voice. It filters, in case she's speaking to him. She's not. He almost dismisses it, but other sounds leak in and the tone of her voice is odd enough to merit investigation.

"What do you think you're doing?" is the phrase that got through. The phrase that followed was the one that tipped him off, "I don't know who you are but you can't be in here."

In a terrible, instinctive way, he knows who he's going to see when he edges back around the corner.

Molly is just beginning her second autopsy of the day. Having completed her surface inspection and made the initial Y-incision to the torso, she is peeling back that first layer. Thus engaged, she's stuck holding the body open like a gleaming pink envelope, while his ever-reliable guide, the faithful one, is hanging on the edge of the gurney, gasping and heaving for every breath. She's bright red, beaded with sweat, barely on her feet. The opening corpse doesn't seem to bother her. In a calm, silent place, amongst the cold white dead, she's almost comforting.

He checks that thought. Careful of thinking like that. Careful of positive associations around the messenger.

"Who are you?" Molly is trying again. "What's the matter?"

The girl stops hanging over the body, looks up. Her mouth hangs open, though whether to better aid her breathing or to speak is unclear. But when she lifts her head her eyes light for Holmes and she flops, relieved. Points over Molly's shoulder, finger waving. "Looking-" she pants, "Looking for him. Sorry… Doctor Hooper… Interrupting… Dead important…" Her own pun makes her groan as she tries stepping away from the gurney. A skate scatters beneath her and she almost falls. Rights herself and rolls gently across the floor to hang on Holmes' arm instead. She tries to pull him towards the door.

"What on Earth do you think you're doing here?"

She reaches up, stabs a finger into his chest. It'll bruise, later. "_Lucky_," she grunts at him, then waves the hand madly in the air – 'Here'. "Same hos… hospital…"

She tugs at his hand again, but he won't let her take him anywhere. She hasn't the strength to move him, not an inch. Hangs back from his hand, then from his lapels. Finally relents and stands with her arms hanging, still heaving. Too much like a parody of exertion to really be faking anything. He lets her stand another empty moment like that, until she shrugs at him, open hands, 'What?'

"_Who's_ in the same hospital?"

"No time. Girl. On her own. Might talk..."

"Full sentences, if you wouldn't mind."

"Fuh… full-?" The messenger looks downright outraged that he has even asked. Holmes has Molly at his shoulder, asking who the girl is. He ignores the question. Not just because he has nothing concrete to tell her, but because even if he did he wouldn't want Molly to know. The farther this creature can be kept from her, the better.

The girl coughs and straightens herself, fills her lungs. This is the full sentence she offers, "I just chased a bleeding ambulance from Soho for you. _Follow_!"

"That's not _so_ bad," Molly is saying distantly. "Could've been going to Cardiac Trauma out at Holby…"

The shudder of the messenger's breathing, the tremble of exhaustion, all of that stops. Holmes watches colour drain out of her face as her eyes fix on Molly's, head tilting very slightly, teeth set together and just on show. He feels Molly quail away as well, floundering, mouth flapping for words that don't exist. Fast as the girl turned wicked, his hand lashes out and claps sharp and stinging to the whitening cheek. He wraps his thumb around to pinch her jaw and draws her gaze to him. "Don't," he says. "Don't even think it."

Molly, regaining a degree of composure, steps in and says softly, "If it's inside the hospital I can look into it for you."

"No," he tells her. He's still holding the messenger's face, but not her eyes. Those burn unbridled at Molly. Really, to send Molly ahead is a much better idea, but no, not now, not with this thing in the room. "No. Stay here. Work on. Look for Mies if you can. Gunshot wound in the last two years. No, I'll follow… _this_."

The girl's normal, size-too-large smile returns like it was never gone. "I'm Jiminy, today, if you need a name." He knows better than to question that. Now he follows, a step behind. She leads him down corridors and downstairs, up to wards he's never had need to visit before. Everywhere, all around, the damaged and the dying. But he's following a young woman who just followed an ambulance on roller skates that don't fit, who is telling him, "I didn't mean to get uppity before. But I have to work for you as much as for anybody else in the game. I really can't ever be messing you about, and you always treat me like I'm messing you about. And you abandoned me the other night when you went for Charlie so…"

"I'm very sorry."

"No, you're not. You might be, though, soon enough, so I'll live with it."

He already knows what she's taking him to see. She told him everything. Ambulance. Soho. Lucky it was the hospital he was standing in. Only went to Molly to locate him. She wasn't expecting any of this so soon. He knows exactly what she's taking him to. It's only the precise scale and scope that are still mysterious.

Just like Molly, the messenger parks him out of sight, beyond a set of swinging doors. She'll go ahead, she says, to check that the police are gone or haven't arrived yet.

As soon as she leaves his sight, she enters someone else's. She gets what must just be her usual reaction, "Oh, boy Jesus, not you again. Who even _are_ you?"

That voice. Holmes leans his head back against the wall, very briefly shuts his eyes. There's a sensation in his chest, between his two lungs, beneath the ribs, very much like having a needle jabbed deeper and deeper in.

Unusually, though, this voice gets one of the messenger's hands pressed across it very quickly. "No, no, no, no shouting. Shouting brings orderlies brings security brings cops, no, no shouting. Come on, I've got a surprise for you." There's some more muffled shouting, a scuffle of unwilling footsteps.

The messenger shoves Emily through the doors to see him.

Emily forgets all about the little demon at that very first glance. There's no blame in her expression, only hope, belief, faith. Everything that shone from Molly the night he left and doesn't anymore. The creature burns for a moment in the shadow beyond the doors. The next time they swing, there's nobody there.

Emily tells him everything. Repeatedly throughout, she tells him how awful it was. She went out, 'to see a man about a dog, or a diamond dog, if you get my meaning'. She returned to find the shop wrecked. Mag, she tells him, was on the floor. That's all she says, but given the fact that Mag is currently in an operating theatre, he assumes it's just all she can _bear_ to say.

"Did you get a look at him?"

"He was behind me. I turned around, but he swung at me. I ducked and I fell and then he was gone. I… I was calling an ambulance, I didn't look after that."

It has been a matter of hours since he went to Mag and Emily at the shop.

First, Holmes notices that Emily is watching him closely. Then that her gaze is wary, that she holds herself to the wall, tucks her face behind the wing of her hair. Then he begins to analyse what might be scaring her. His breathing is the obvious factor, and because it is heavy and rasping in and out through his teeth, it calls to mind the messenger. Sensing the nuances of his expression, he realizes his face has formed itself to the same rage that terrified a woman holding a scalpel over a stripped chest cavity.

He forces himself to compose. Emily thinks she's watching the initial anger disappear and dives at him again, another too-tight hug. No words this time.

She thinks he's saving her.

"Don't worry," he says. "I'll get him."

"A club," she tells him, "He hit her with a club."


	16. The Big Blind

A golf club is a nasty weapon. They're long enough and thin enough to travel in much the same way a whip will. The end that gets all that momentum behind it weighted, with a flat edge and a round edge. The collision between a skull and a golf club is, therefore, very similar to that between Abel's and the river stone with which his brother stoved it in, way back when murder began. Stones and golf clubs, Holmes knows them both. He is well placed to make the comparison.

Of course, the golf club is gone for evidence.

The police locked the pawnshop when they left. The nature of the business means it's well enough protected not to need a guard. The assault, they say, had to happen in the daytime. The safety doors and deadbolts and reinforced glass and wire grilles would have stopped anyone breaking in at night.

Holmes had Emily's back door keys. The steel window shutters are keeping out the low evening light, but no one can look in on him either, and he can live with it. He uses his phone for a torch.

The golf club is bagged up and in a locker somewhere, but he doesn't need to see it. It's one missing from a set on display near the door. Mag's attacker walked in, selected a weapon. Naturally the pawnbroker came over to see if she could help, to secure the sale. The first blood is on the wall over a case of medals.

It's a good distance from where the golfer would have been standing. High up too, suggesting that Mag was hit right at the level of her head, even taken off her feet by the blow. He accounts for the length of the golf club, but it still implies a man, very tall, with arms either well in proportion to him or slightly too long; a knuckle-dragger. The brute strength would have to be incredible, but not unthinkable.

There's a small uneven pool of blood with a pointed corner on the floor near his foot. Mag bit her tongue.

But it is the state of the shop itself that he finds most intriguing, and much, much easier to study at length. Nothing has been left untouched. He can see clearly the great swathes where the club was used to clear surfaces, and the heaps left on the floor. Nothing here is priceless. Rather the point of Mag's business is that everything has a price. But there are beautiful things and fragile things broken in piles on the floor. There's a plate which has been stamped and stood on until it gave away to dust.

Tucked away down their little mews, there's not a lot of passing traffic. Holmes can only guess at how long all of this went on before Emily interrupted them.

He goes to a ruined jewellery cabinet, looking down onto the pads. A fly crawls along the grey velvet, skirting glittering glass fragments and scattered rings, pendants tangled in their chains, Rolex and Rotary watches gleaming. Emily polishes them. All the silver on a Tuesday, all the gold on a Friday. He's surprised he remembers that little fact, particularly when there is one so much more important to distract him.

All of these things are still here.

There's a first edition _The Sun Also Rises_ worth thousands locked up behind the counter. There's an original Beatles Yesterday and Today vinyl with the butcher cover on the wall. And even for the very stupid thief, there are lots of shiny things right here in the case.

And all of these things are still here.

There's a different gleam altogether in the corner of his eye. On the floor behind the counter, just at the workshop door. Another spot of blood. Rounded, this one. Dripping.

He feels his breathing catch again. It's alright, he allows it. It doesn't count as the sort of rage that leads to mistakes. It's really a terribly personal crime scene. 'Personal', once robbery has been ruled out, is really the only explanation.

He crouches to the dark little circle. Larger than one drop. Not from a great height. Mag kneeling, perhaps, or pushed up on one arm. The thought of her crawling occurs to him, but he dismisses it. It's not unlikely, he just dismisses it. The blood is more likely from her bitten mouth than her head; hair, clothes, all these things would tend to absorb that sort of seepage. And the mark is just outside the door. She didn't get any farther than that.

Instinctively, he cuts his eyes to the side. Another bloody mark, harder to see in the dim light because it's lighter and is smeared. Fast contact, dragged along.

The golf club again. The scene is right; Mag on the floor, probably speaking. Defending her work, maybe. Maybe being asked something. What did her attacker want in the workshop? She says too much, or just answers the question, and the golf club comes down again. The blood on the doorframe is from the pre-existing head wound, implying that she was hit sideways into it.

Her face.

Fractured jaw, damaged ocular orbit, massive shock to the optic nerve. Immobilized for upwards of four, five months, possible blindness.

She mends watches and clocks. Tiny springs, cogs thin and delicate as wafer biscuits. Blind in one eye.

Possible brain damage.

Still crouched, he shoves open the workshop door. Expects the same carnage as he's seen out here.

But the workshop is pristine. The only mess is what was there this morning. Untouched. This, this explains it. Whatever Mag was beaten, _clubbed_, for, it's in here. Or, more than likely, it's gone. How likely is Emily's interruption to have put off someone of this scale and strength? No, the job must have been done for him to leave her alive and step out of the room right over her head.

While his internal image of the pawnshop as it was before is perfect, while he could pick over the wreckage and tell what item was gone out _there_, this is Mag's sanctum. This morning was only the third time he'd ever been admitted into it and his attention had not been exactly focussed on creating an accurate mental catalogue. At any rate, it's full of unrecognized instruments and little drawers and things tucked away in files. What chance does he have?

Damn.

Skirting the blood, he steps up into the room anyway, looking for something, anything. The slightest tip will be enough, something the police haven't taken away to pile up and bury yet. The smallest, most fragile thing.

And sometimes, it would seem, the need and the wish are enough.

They are amongst the dust, you see, and no one thought anything of the dust in this room, but Holmes spots them. A little shower of very fine, red-tinged hairs, at the base of a set of shallow filing drawers full of tiny delicate tools. Nothing else but tools, though, not that he can see. The hairs, though, the hairs are good.

Without a magnifying glass of his own, he casts around for a replacement. Finds Mag's very old, very precise lens. Worn on the edges where she holds it in the hitch around her right eye. He thinks back to scene at the door. The right eye is the one that's been hit, the one at risk. Blindness. Blind in one eye. Oh God, she mends watches… He hates the feel of the eyeglass, feels as if it stays cold rather than accept heat from him.

Five or six short ginger hairs. Fine at first glance, but the more he looks, they're just stunted. Reluctant growth. Regrowth, perhaps. Because of the colour his first thought is of the messenger, but the springy curve, the strong follicle, this is a man's hair, and probably facial, and Holmes stands breathing in the relief of the solution, of just knowing.

Morgan.

The name is a salve, a salvation; the guilt goes cold underneath it, because now he can do something about it.

In almost the same moment, his phone begins to ring. Molly.

"Hello?"

"Hello? Sherlock?" A crackle on the line between them. He checks his phone, but she must be the one with bad reception. The hospital's not built for it. But another few bars on his end couldn't hurt, so he starts to leave the workshop as he found it. Closes the door again, backing away. "Hello?"

"Molly?"

"Hi. Where are you? You disappeared with that… Who _was_ that?"

"…Hold on a second. Just having a bit of trouble with the connection."

"Your thief, Sherlock, I think I've found her. Maya Darcy, in the end."

"Ah, of course. Classic combination…"

"Oh, yeah, you heard _that_ alright…"

He leaves through Mag and Emily's personal quarters, back out into the messy yard. "Can you hear me now?"

"Nice try." Molly is telling him about Maya Darcy and her gunshot, her various distinguishing marks, height, hair and eye colour. Holmes is looking about in the mess of bicycle frames and scrap iron for the flowerpot Emily told him to leave her keys under. A flower pot is about the one thing that does not make itself apparent. With no other recourse, he crouches and buries the bunch, rattling, enamel fish keychain grinning up at him, behind a clutter of tin buckets.

"Send me the address," he tells her. It's dark now, but he knows he can still grab Mies before the night is out and then get straight back to Morgan. It's perfect. He's back on the rails, ready to win, ready, more than ready for it, waiting. "And Molly, be on the lookout for a man you can't miss. Six-eight, nine maybe, ginger, face like abused modelling cla- Never mind…" As he stood, he turned towards the open gate, and even as he stood there a shadow fell across the streetlight orange. Almost, in fact, blocking the streetlight entirely. "I've got him here."

"Sherlock?"

"I'll call you back."

"Sherlock, don't you dare hang up this phone." But he does, if only because he can't listen to her panic for him.

Morgan is approaching, steadily. The dark cuts him out in silhouette. From the line of him, he's unarmed, but that doesn't mean anything. Physically, there's not a lot Holmes could go if Morgan decided simply to twist his head from his shoulders. Tactics and tricks can take him so far, but they'll never really make an impression. Morgan is built, designed and trained to take and deliver beatings. No more and no less.

"You don't make sense," he says. He is addressing the thought more than Morgan himself, but he still probably shouldn't say it out loud. "Milverton's limp, but he's clever. Mies is about as difficult to keep up with as the average serial killer and if the fourth is who I can't help but suspect then he's an intellect to beware but _you_… No, you don't fit. You're not good game. What is this?"

"What time is it?" Morgan says in retort.

It is, at least, a much better reaction that Holmes had any right to expect, and so he answers. "It's gone ten."

"And you last saw Dani at what, half-five, six?" And Morgan might be comparatively thick, but the principles of basic maths don't escape him. "Seven to eight hours… That's a tough one to judge, you know… But I'll have to give it a go. I can only overshoot, in the end."

"I beg your pardon?"

But he's only addressing Morgan's swinging fist. And the rest, after that, has no streetlights at all, and no light of any other kind either.


	17. A Change Of Suit

The world is warm, and dark, and wonderful. There are soft voices and tender hands. There is a cool damp cloth and no unnecessary noise. Nothing is wrong, nor ever has been, nor ever will be. Even Holmes' dreams are not so peaceful, so content, so utterly empty.

Then the cloth is dampened again, comes back just a touch too cold, too wet, and not to his forehead this time but the great mound swollen up on the corner of his jaw and it _hurts_, damn it.

In that soft dark moment there could have been no pain.

Now he's awake. Now it's over. He remembers everything. That hurts too. Hangs too heavy on him. He has to swim up for consciousness and it's pulling him down. The daubing cloth helps. The little stabs of pain have an oddly clarifying effect. He starts to stir.

The tender hands, it seems, out beyond the fog, have voices and one of them is calling softly to the other, "Doctor Hooper."

Steps hurry and all of a sudden there's someone close to him. A hand on the undamaged side of his face. "Sherlock? Sherlock, can you hear me?" Yes, but he doesn't want to. He wants to go back to where he was before and hasn't the strength to deny it. "Sherlock, _wake up_. Can you hear me?"

She needs him to wake up. Not just so she'll know he's not dead or permanently damaged, either. She just needs him to wake up. And up there, on the other side of the dark it's too dangerous, too scary, for him just to abandon her. That's about the only reason he tries to open his eyes. The light hurts like glass and he shuts them again, but it's enough for her. "Don't turn your head," she says, "You wrenched your neck when he hit you." That's good; simple, practical fact, something to hold on to, and it's easier to deal with than her need, her feelings. In return, he has simple practical questions, but he tries to open his eyes again first.

The light.

The light hurts.

And it's not a yellow, indoor light, nothing that can be switched off or dimmed or have a blanket thrown over it. Clean, crisp white light.

Suddenly he tries to do everything all at once, sitting up, turning, reaching out for Molly. He doesn't quite make it. He falls onto his elbow, nearly sliding to the floor. But his free hand finds her arm and latches on. "Molly. Molly, what… what time is it?"

"Is that really important?"

"_Yes_."

"Sherlock, please, just lie down-"

"_What – time_?"

"It's after seven."

Then the diamonds are gone. Mies won. Now he does as he was asked and lies back, shuts his eyes again. He wants to go back to the dark, but it won't let him in anymore. He's been unconscious and the world had the indecency to go on turning, _damn it – _to _hell_ with the pain, to _hell_ with his aching jaw and the sprains in his neck, to _hell_ with all. Damn.

Very, very far away, Molly is asking him what's the matter. He aware of her more than he really hears her.

Even with Morgan and the fourth, the best he can hope for is a majority. And a majority is not enough. If the win is not absolute then it's not a win.

He knows he should be thinking. A way to counter Morgan, whether or not to pursue the possible fourth before they ever act, some other way to capture Mies and that's only if she isn't long gone. But he can't. Can't think. Between the pounding in his head and just that simple loss, he can't think at all. And to top it all, Molly takes him by the shoulders, waits for him to open his eyes and look at her. She's very honest, very earnest when she tells him, "Don't think of it now." He almost laughs, but it would be a bitter, desperate sound and he doesn't want her to hear that.

Molly is looking right at him. She hasn't slept. Tired and worried and sick. Still, because he is alive and conscious, she smiles. Just over her shoulder, as his eyes start to focus, he sees that the other pair of hands, the other voice, was Emily. She's wringing the damp cloth between her hands, hiding back behind her hair again. She is, however, still here, and has been tending to him just as Molly has, and after what she suffered yesterday.

Don't think of it, she says.

What else should he do but think of it? They suffer and he's tired of it. With Mies' escape the game can never be complete, the beast can't be killed and the only heartbeat he can hear is the one thumping in his bruised face. What else can he do but think about it?

His surroundings start to make more sense. The back living room at the pawnshop. Emily found him unconscious when she returned from the hospital. They told her to leave, to sleep, that there was nothing she could do. If it hadn't been for him, she would have told them where to go. Never would have dreamt of leaving Mag's side. But she came back. She knew that, at the time, he still needed her help finding Mies' fence.

And when she found him she knew enough to find his phone. The only number out, the only number in, and the one that kept calling even as she was holding it, was Molly.

They've heaved him in here and checked him over and kept watch.

That's why he starts to get up again. Molly protests, and when he doesn't listen, she shoves him back. "You're staying here," she says, stern as a teacher. It's the closest she can get to being forceful. In his current state, it's almost enough. "You're no good injured and you're worse concussed. I'm not having it, Sherlock. You can't end up on my slab; I wouldn't be able to-" First, she breaks off. A moment later, she very briefly shuts her eyes. And a moment after that, she stands away from him. She turns to Emily and tells her to put the kettle on.

"For… for more water?"

Gently smiling, "No. For tea."

Holmes cuts in, "No, Emily, wait." Said too fast and loud for his spinning head and has to take a second. "I… I'd like a word with you. If my physician will allow." Molly eyes him. It's not just his sending her out of the room that makes her suspicious, but the sudden humour.

She looks at Molly, pointing at him. Flatly, matter-of-fact, "He doesn't go anywhere."

Emily nods, "Yes, Doctor Hooper."

As Molly edges slowly out of the room, Emily crosses it. She sits gingerly on the edge of the sofa. First, one of her hands hovers over his. In the end she just holds onto her seat with it. He's shocked when she opens her mouth to say, "Your jacket's in the kitchen."

"What?"

"I can probably cover you that far anyway. You'll have to try walking first, though, see if it sticks." He's staring. She feels it and goes on. "You _are_ going, aren't you? What about the man who hit you? He hit Mag. Whatever you have to do, I'm behind you, one-hundred percent. Doctor Hooper's worried about you but… Oh, please don't think I don't worry, but…"

She's glaring at a spot between herself and the floor. He recognizes the sentiment – 'But get him.'

"He took something, Emily. From the workshop. Something small, but important. I need you to find out what it was. It makes all the difference there is."

Her gaze never shifts. "It's done."

He can't look at this. Just like before, he's not thinking when he grabs hold of her wrist. "Emily. Emily, don't hate. That's how they get in."

"Oh, it's a bit late for all that, I'm afraid. Just a little bit."

Holmes doesn't want to leave her like this. But while he feels around for something else to say, something delicate and effective that means he won't have to sit up, there's a noise in the other room, like a thunderclap, glass rattling in its frame, a thud of flesh thrown at something solid, a huge noise and they both jump. Molly yelps, but it fades quickly. The sounds she makes afterward aren't fear or pain, but anger. And beyond that, muffled past reinforced glass, a bright, breathless cackle is splitting the morning and Holmes' skull.

It is, of course, the faithful one.

Leaning on Emily's shoulder, he's just finding his feet by the time he reaches the kitchen. Molly is standing away from the back door, grimacing, both hands pressed down flat on the worktop. The messenger, silently shaking, is in the morning light outside the door, clutching her stomach she's laughing so hard.

She's pointing inside at Molly, and they can just make out, "You should have seen your face! That's what you get for laughing at me, you mardy cow!" She flops useless against the door just as Holmes throws it open. He's not steady enough to take the sudden weight. He falls against the fridge, and she collapses too, head landing on his knee. For just a moment, they are fallen together. He shoves her off but she only rolls with it and lies hysterical on the floor.

Emily and Molly help him up so he can stand over her. She lolls on her back and looks straight up, unintimidated, unabashed.

"I'm _actually_ here for _you_, Sickbed," she says.

"What did you just call me?"

"Not important. Just showing you how you can call anybody about anything and it'll sound alright and then they can save your number so they don't have to remember it anymore, remember? And I _really_ wanted to leave you alone so you can get better, because Morgan's hit me before and I didn't wake up for a day and a half, but that was supposed to happen, it was so I could learn to take a hit, and because none of them really liked me that day, and-"

"So why _are_ you here?" Molly spits at her. Molly's reaction is visceral, very probably typical of everyday reactions to the girl's madness; she doesn't know what she is, what's wrong with her, what goes on in her head. She only knows that she hates it and feels justified in doing so.

The last of the laughter dies. The monster nods up at her temporary master and grins, "_He_ knows." He's about to tell her she couldn't be more wrong. Then it strikes him. She has anticipated him by a matter of moments, and as she sees realization dawn on her face she forces him to meet her eyes; "He wished for me and I appeared."

* * *

[A/N - Ladies and gentlemen, due to a cataclysmic failure of the laptop, my usual daily updates might find themselves getting a little patchy. I'm going to do my absolute damnedest to keep everything flowing, but you'll forgive me if I can't quite manage it. I apologize in advance for any mess-ups.]


	18. The Turn

The nameless angel has given up on being a conscience. She's decided she likes Jiminy Cricket and doesn't want to ruin him for others. Now she's made up her mind to be a superhero. Not the kind with weird powers or anything; the proper kind, the vigilante kind that sees the world going wrong and decides to put it right. Holmes is going to be her first case. That'll be nice for him, won't it, being somebody else's case, not having to worry.

Like all great heroes, she is misunderstood. Doctor Hooper is still here, and Pawn Girl, and neither of them will leave. Everybody still thinks she means to hurt him. But that's just not true. They wouldn't even give her tea. That's alright, she can live without tea. Can live without most things. These few days she hasn't had time for very much at all.

In that way, she understands Holmes when he can't quite focus on her, when his eyes are swimming. Eight hours unconscious is not the same as eight hours asleep. "Where did you come from?" he manages.

"You need me."

He doesn't deny it. He waves a hand like she missed the point, but he doesn't deny it. "I mean in the first place. If someone were to send you back from whence you came, where would they send you?"

As a contemporary sort of superhero, she knows it's best to fight shy of emotion and biology, so she blushes; "Surely you don't need me to tell you _that_ story..."

The women, the ones who think they're guarding him, they sigh and roll their eyes. Doctor Hooper leans in; "Sherlock, is this really a good idea?" But Holmes doesn't look away from the messenger. She is looking at the women, and hating them because he had them to tend to his wounds. When Morgan hit _her_ she was propped in a corner until she came to and nobody did a thing. But she becomes suddenly terribly afraid that he's reading her mind, knowing all of this somehow. She hugs herself and shrugs, "It probably doesn't make any difference, long term."

"It'll make me trust you now."

"What if I lie?"

"Don't."

This isn't what she came here for. All of a sudden she feels like he's unmasking her and it's only the first issue. Maybe she's as bad at playing heroes as she is at most things. "I was half-dead in the street and you brought me coffee. I was fifteen." She stops, wraps her arms around herself. She's not saying anymore. He can do whatever he wants. He remembers or he doesn't; she's not telling him anymore. "Before that isn't important."

"And what was your name then?"

"Jesus, you're _obsessed_. Ask me why I'm here. Ask it. I'll give you an easy answer and you'll like it, so just ask me why I'm here. That's usually what you all want to bloody know... I don't see what me and my name have got to do with anything."

He knows who she is now. He hasn't said anything, but she looks at him and gets that impression. Somewhere deep down she's made his headache worse. Well, good. She can be very bitter sometimes. When she's bitter she wants him to hold onto that headache for the rest of his life.

But he relents and says, "Why are you here?"

"You wanted me to come. Because it's not right, what they done. Mies and Morgan shouldn't have been allowed to step together like that. It's cheating."

He has been hooked over his coffee. It's easier on his neck. It looks swollen and she knows how painful that can be. But now, for the first time, he lifts more than his eyes. Seeing her differently. He's remembered her, she knows it. And he knows she can't and won't hurt him. It's not her. It's not in the plan either, but it's not in _her_. Somehow, since she's been hanging around with him, her own capacities and needs are starting to feel important again.

Have to keep an eye on that.

"So what does a good dealer do about cheating?" he asks her. Just the fact that he's playing along, that he uses the right words, buoys her up. She finds a little of her usual spark again, and she's able to smile.

She'll be the Croupier, when she's a superhero.

"Well, it's my duty, I feel, to level out the playing field."

"Mies," he demands.

"No. Can't give you her. But I can, however, skip you to the end with Morgan. I can take you straight there and hand him to you incapable of defending himself." Giving Morgan no chance. Holmes was given no chance with Miss Mies, so Morgan forfeited his. That seems more than fair to the messenger.

"Why can't I have Mies?"

"She's not on offer."

"She's always on offer."

"Don't be childish. Take the win. Morgan'll be yours and I know for a fact the fourth isn't ready to go. It's a good deal. It wins and it gives you time. Take it."

Her heart jumps when he starts to get up. Pushing up from the table, trying to step sideways out of his seat. Pawn Girl tries pushing him back. Doctor Hooper has him by the shoulders, trying to hold him down. And it's true, he really can't stay upright too well.

He looks past them, right at the messenger, and nods towards the door again. Not telling her leave, for once, but telling her to wait outside.

Finally, _finally_, he sees what she is, that she means no harm, that she's only looking out for him.

He's so _nice_!

She sits on the step. They're arguing in here. Out here, she's alone. The yard is still dim and the kitchen light picks out a blurry version of her shadow.

The messenger takes the silver spray can from her backpack again and starts to harden the outline, solidifying herself. As she does, she speaks to it, breathing out life, "I wouldn't have trusted us at first either, would you?" Her shadow doesn't answer. She gets it; it's ashamed of them, the way they behave, the things they say and do and can't help it. "But that's the point. Because of angels, see? Like us, we're angels, but they're humans, except for him. But he's been here with humans for so long that he forgets sometimes. But he sees us now, so it's alright. Him and us, we'll be okay now."

The wings she adds this time aren't quite so big as before. They're neater and prettier, folded in around her, very peaceful, very content. She looks down at them and smiles, hoping someday she'll feel like that.

Besides, it doesn't do to have the biggest wings in the room, it's not polite. She needs to let Holmes take the biggest wings.

Satan was an angel, first. She never knew that before. God told her that story. That Satan was the brightest and most beautiful angel in all of heaven. But he decided he didn't want to spend all day kneeling and praying and worshipping, that he didn't like belonging to a race who had been designed to do just that. 'Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven,' God said.

When Holmes opens the door, the light drowns her artwork and he doesn't see. He leaves a shoeprint on her left shoulder as he steps out.

Pawn Girl's standing the doorway. Doctor Hooper's stormed out into the hall and is standing pouting. Swaying back and forth on her roller skates, the messenger looks at her back, until Pawn Girl stamps at her, like she's a stray dog.

The noise catches Holmes attention. He looks back over his shoulder. "Haven't changed your mind, I hope."

The messenger shakes her head and rushes to his heel.

She can't reign in hell, or in heaven. She serves. Someday her God will tell her which of them is which.


	19. Ace Face

- _Moran misses you. Go and see him first_

The messenger hates to admit it, but her God is wrong. Moran doesn't miss her. He tells her as much when she finds him in the graveyard.

He is standing by the stone when she arrives. She hangs back, swinging in the low branches of a tree, but silently. She _wants_ to just stand and be respectful, but he takes his time. She can't really be still for that long, not without Him. Before, He would have kept her next to His chair and she could have sat content for hours. But now she ends up swinging, hanging by her arms and swaying her feet back and forth, and has to, can't not.

He knows she's here, though. And when he's done with whatever wordless ritual keeps bringing him back here, he comes over to her. Comes smiling too, and nobody ever comes smiling to see the faithful one. Moran comes and _hugs_ her. It's been so long since she had a hug that she clings to him rather longer than he probably wants.

"Knew you'd show up in this somewhere, Scout," he tells the top of her head, before he can peel her away. "You set up that room with the cards, didn't you?"

The messenger grins. Finally, a little recognition. "How did you guess?"

"Because it wasn't a fully stocked bar but everybody's usual was there. You've fetched and carried for us enough times to know." Moran takes her under his arm, pulling her along by his side. She reaches up across him and turns up the collar of his coat against the cold. He was always the nicest to her. He used to bring her caramels, even when she wasn't allowed any. As he pulls her by the grave again, he points at it. "Just out of interest, who's buried there?"

She leans in, squinting. Very slowly, like a child just learning, she sounds out, "_Rich-ard-Broo-ooke..."_

"Alright, smart arse, don't tell me then."

"Sorry, Colonel Moran. It's not my fault. You know I'm bound on some things. I have to be."

"That's alright, Scout." He is holding her against his side. She curves in to be held more tightly, and touches the hand around her shoulders. "You've been all on your own, haven't you?" Whatever she mumbles, he misses, but he feels her nod against him. "You should have come to see me."

And the next thing he feels through his coat is her little heart jumping, all of her seizing as she holds her breath and spins out in front of him. She holds him by both hands and looks up into his face, with so much love and hope and fear that he can't quite look back at her. "Then you really _have_ missed me!" she breathes. "_Me_!"

"You, Scout? How could I live without you, that's the question." He chucks her chin gently with the side of his fist. "You're the best souvenir I could ever have asked for."

She lets him muss her hair and folds back in under his arm. Maybe not glowing quite so brightly as she did before. That's what she meant the first time, when her God sent her that text. Colonel Moran doesn't miss _her_, oh no. He's the nicest to her and she likes him very much and doesn't hold it against him, oh, no, not at all, but he doesn't miss _her_. He misses God, and only wants to be close to her because she is the archangel. The next best thing. The walking memory. The souvenir.

She noticed, you know, that he wouldn't look back at her. Her eyes are the only windows to God's dead, hollow soul. That's why. That's all of why. It is an honour and a privilege and she tries not to cry.

She stays completely still, like a little base metal statue of herself. He is sweeping her along and doesn't notice.

"Whatever you want," she says, without moving her jaw, still being a souvenir version of herself. "Whatever you need me to do for you, any help, that's what I'm here for."

"I'll have plenty of work for you soon enough. You're a good girl, Scout." She loves him for saying it. She tries not to cry.

"Stop here," she says, eyeing a fresh burial. "I need a bouquet."

* * *

Emily is wearing a pair of cheap, bookshop reading glasses, keeping a headache at bay as long as possible. Doctor Hooper wants her to stop and rest, but that's not happening. Sherlock said, said _explicitly_, that whatever Morgan took from the workshop was important, and she's going to find out what it was.

Emily wasn't quite so torn up when he walked off, either. Their argument was different. Hooper wanted him to stay. Emily wanted to go with him. He was equally adamant with both. But she's been wondering, as she goes painfully back and forth between Mag's handwritten records and the contents of the case Holmes suggested, who that ugly, mental girl was, and more importantly who she _thinks_ she is, and more importantly again why _she_ got to ride along and Emily was left behind.

She is still wondering while she turns away from the light, winces, rubs her eyes. Still wondering when she hears that low voice, "You should take a break, Emily."

Her immediate instinct is to hug him again, or possibly kick him in the shin for leaving her here alone. She looks up and stops thinking about any of that.

He was haggard and done when he left, but this is different. This isn't the result of a blow to the head or a throbbing lump on the face, this is coming from inside him somewhere. Emily doesn't understand. Doesn't want to. Just wants it to stop. She turns the chair around so he can sit, perches up on Mag's stool. "What happened?"

"Your eyes," he mumbles. "You'll strain them."

"Never mind me. What about Morgan?"

She shouldn't have said the name; something huge flares up in him and Emily quails. That's it, that's what's wrong. That fire that burns and dies on a second has been burning and burning and burnt him out. "He is," Holmes says, with powerful restraint, "in police custody."

Emily should ask, wants to, almost does it, where else Morgan has been tonight. Hell and Hospital are the two answers that go through her mind. She bites her tongue.

"This is it," he says, tipping back his head to look at the ceiling, "This is why she didn't want me to come back here."

"Who?"

He's getting up again, already, pulling his coat tight, sweeping towards the door. "You should stop."

"Stop what? You're not making any sense."

"This. Looking. It's not important."

"But you said-"

"I lied. To keep you busy. So you wouldn't follow me to Morgan. Enough? Would it be alright with you if I left now, Emily?"

She hates his tone and his coldness and not understanding why. It makes her angry enough to let him go, even when she suspects he might have intended that. Firstly, though, she pulls a white card from beneath Mag's ledger and holds it out to him. "Doctor Hooper left this. Said it was all she had, and she needed sleep, and you'd walked out on her anyway."

He takes it, stuffs it into his pocket without looking, and walks out again.

* * *

The card bore the name 'Maya Darcy', and the address of a flat in Camden Town. Upon arrival, he finds it to be on the first floor directly above a shop dealing primarily in sex toys and pornography. Given that the other addresses he has for Danielle Mies are within spitting distance of an art gallery and a police station respectively, he probably should have been expecting that.

He is at the door, about to press the buzzer, when he hears a door slam upstairs. He eases quickly away from the glass and into the doorway of the next building.

Mies exits. She appears, at first, to be dressed rather modestly (by the usual standards). But her heels and hem are just a half-inch too high not to draw attention. While her Mandarin collar is tight around her neck, the V doesn't quite meet until it almost meets the balcony of a bra which is, casually, accidentally of course, just showing. She is beautifully made up. She has made just enough effort to pin her hair back so that it appears wild and untameable.

Conclusion; there is a seduction afoot.

Rather than confront her, he follows. He is _compelled_ to follow. And anyway, it lets his hate burn brighter. And anyway, he wants to take her at the best possible moment. She already thinks she's won. Now let her think she can collect on her prizes before he brings it down upon her head.

There's no taxi, thankfully, so she couldn't have far to go.

In the end, he follows her no farther than Bayham Road, to a small and rather dilapidated general practice.

Mies, the thief and lover, the animal, the Bitch, struck down by a common cold?

Holmes doesn't buy it.

He watches from the vestibule until he sees she doesn't stop in the waiting room. Walks right on through, and when she smiles at the receptionist, the receptionist smiles back. They know each other. She's allowed and expected to be here.

Rather than have to announce himself, he leaves her a moment and tries to find a back door. A window will do. An air-conditioning vent he could listen at will do, because the longer he stays in the area, the longer he's around a surgery, the darker and sterner his thoughts become. He's being led to a conclusion he doesn't like, to the realization that he doesn't know quite what he'll do to her if his suspicions are confirmed.

There is a window. Too high up for him to see in. But it's open, and he hears a voice say, "Maya." A voice he knows, and has tried to forget like all the others and never has. The voice clears it's throat, adopts a new tone. Trying to play the wolf and not the panting puppy. There's only one wolf in that room, though. One wolf, and Holmes intends now to have her pelt. "I mean, Miss Darcy. What seems to be the trouble?"

And this, this is where he would shout, where he would turn and pound a fist against the brick until he was heard, shout and hope that his voice is as new to this doctor as the doctor's was to him.

A small wiry hand wraps around his arm.

The messenger, of course. To stop him doing anything stupid. Didn't she tell him that was her job? She is holding him back, but she says nothing, and her expression is as sad as loss and understanding. He rages, but he doesn't move. Doesn't shout. Keeps his voice to himself.

Miss Darcy is telling Doctor Watson all about her terrible _ache_, in a tone that makes Holmes' teeth jam together like he might bite right through them.

The messenger pries his fist open and worms her fingers through his.

Miss Darcy and Doctor Watson are going out for lunch before he prescribes anything for those aches of hers.

Holmes' hand is trying to be a fist again, squeezing so hard the messenger's bony fingers are forced out straight. She doesn't complain, though. She just closes her other hand underneath and pushes something cool and hard against his palm until he takes it.

A key. _Mies?_ he mouths, holding it up. The messenger nods, with a brave little smile. His grip on her hand, very slightly, eases. He lets her take him away from the surgery, back down the road, back to the flat.


	20. Fifth Card

Holmes waits. He left the girl outside, made her swear not to approach Mies, but it doesn't seem to be a problem. 'Miss Mies', it would seem, is not her favourite person. She is afraid, and vindictive, and useful to him that way so he made no attempt to comfort her.

For the second time, he finds himself alone, looking around the apartment. Different to the other, but still recognizably hers. The perfume is the same. The silk dressing gown trailing over the threshold of the bedroom. The food in the fridge gives her away. Green apples, KitKats, steak, vodka. But something's wrong. Compared to anywhere else he's ever found her, something is missing.

Ashtrays. It strikes him looking at the coffee table that Mies collects and uses vintage ashtrays, and there are none here. No trademark acrid smog either.

Maya Darcy doesn't smoke. Danielle Mies does, but Maya Darcy doesn't. Because Maya Darcy is sleeping with a doctor.

Does she let him think he helped her quit? Does he smell the Mies traces in her hair and think she's cheated? Does he tell her off for it? Is that all just part of the game? And would he ever, if he lived until the end of time, suspect that the woman he knows is a character played by an actress without love, without compunction, without even the understanding that what she's doing is not just wrong or immoral but vicious.

She could die for it. Would she understand then? Would there be a sudden flash as the scales fall from her eyes? Probably not. Either way, he wouldn't mind – if she sees the light it's all the better for her. If she doesn't he still gets to feel justified.

Mies left the flat with lipstick on. When she comes back, she's wearing only the traces. There's no need to see anything else. The simple fact infuriates him.

This time she's not expecting him. Comes in breathing a song, something she's heard from a passing car, swaying her hips. She see him and her breath catches, hand diving dart-fast into the drawer of the telephone table, but he has her knife.

"How'd you get in?"

"Insert key in lock, turn key, open door..."

"That was almost a joke. You've got me worried." She turns her head, cautious, looking at the bookshelves from the corner of her eye.

"Your gun's out of action too." He watches her pass the back of her hand across her mouth. Dragging off her last man in case she needs to use it again. He sees the loose, airy way she moves as she starts towards him, face rearranging like puzzle pieces. "Don't," he says. "Please don't." One long exhalation and she's cold and base again. Falls into the armchair opposite the one he put himself in. Trendy purple patchwork; very Maya Darcy. "I want you to tell me why," he says. "And it will do you no good to pretend you don't know what I'm talking about."

She tosses her head. Whatever the expression on her face, it's genuine, but he doesn't understand it. "Does it really matter?"

"It does to me."

"Why?"

"Because John Watson is one of the finest human beings I have ever had the privilege to know and you are little more than a viper, now _why_? He doesn't know anything."

"Yeah, I figured that out about four days in..."

"What other worth could he possibly have to you?"

"Nothing!" she cries, "He knows nothing, he's too nice, he's boring and he's a bloody awful lover. " She doesn't quite smille, breathes out something like a laugh that dies on her lips. "But I told you I'd missed you, didn't I? Y'know, I only went there today because you didn't show up last night. Where were you?" She's changing the subject. He understands that. But the old subject is poisonous and the new one is very sensitive. He still can't turn his head to the left without difficulty. He looks over, exasperated with the pretence. "Yes, I can see your face. I'm asking you how it happened."

"Danielle, please."

"What?" She looks over, blank. It comes to her slowly. "Wait, you think I had something to do with that?"

"You and Morgan, you went in together."

"Morgan played?"

The trouble with liars is they're so used to covering up their deception they can't disguise honesty. She really doesn't know. And it occurs to him suddenly that until the early hours of this morning she had a few hundred carats to protect and has been here, waiting for him. Why give him a second chance and then prevent him from taking advantage? It doesn't make sense. And Mies, so far, is the only one he's met who hasn't been very well informed of every possible factor.

"She's afraid of you. Won't speak to you. You're out of the loop..."

'Out of the loop' gets her. She sits forward, leaning over her knees. "Who won't talk to me? What does she know?"

He should leave. Walk away and send the police for her. Certainly he should tell her absolutely nothing. Her work here is done and she's not involved anymore and at any rate, she doesn't deserve to know. Rather than spend another second in her hateful presence, he should leave. Tell her nothing. Leave. Mies is out, one way or the other. Out.

Out.

Oh, it's perfect. Beautiful. To hell with leaving, he'll keep her. Keep her and _use_ her. Teach her her own treachery and mercilessness.

"There's a... _girl_, of sorts. A guide."

"If I said the word 'angel'..."

"Yes. Then you know her."

"Haven't seen her since Jim died. And she knows who's running the show, then? Who brought her in?"

And this time Holmes, being a liar himself and unable to mask his honesty, is the one who leans forward, towards her. "_You_ are. The four of you. You, Morgan, Milverton and... Moran, I assume."

"Yeah, but no. I mean, you're right about Seb but... the four of us couldn't organize a piss-up at the Priory. For one, we'd kill each other and for a second, well, why would we run a game on you? No offence, but you were _Jim's_ little hobby. And I was the only one with a... _personal_ interest."

"Then where are the orders coming from?"

She has her suspicions, but won't voice them. She doesn't need to. And he could point out the obvious flaw in her theory, that her key suspect is dead and buried, but then again, so is he. Mies won't say it because she doesn't dare believe it yet, but she wants to. More than anything she wants to. Waiting to be certain is killing her, like an agnostic who prays for a sign. Just the fact that she can sit here and speak to him like he isn't the enemy tells him everything he needs to know.

Firstly, the game has changed considerable. Secondly, if he wants to hurt her, if he wants to give her everything and tear it all away again, this is how he does it.

"Listen to me," he begins, "I'm still in the game and you're still in the organization." Mies is already nodding, more than willing. He's about to close the sale when they are interrupted.

"_Flores_!" wails a familiar voice, out in the street. "_Flores para los muertos!"_

Mies gets to her feet and goes to the window. Leans out over the ledge and laughs, looks down brightly smiling on the faithful one, with light and something like affection. Holmes hasn't seen that on her face in long years, and wonders what the girl could be so afraid of. "Angel!" Mies calls down, with motherly glee. "Angel, why didn't you come and see me?"

"_Flores_," is all she gets in reply. "_Flores para los muertos!_"

Holmes gets up, goes to see. The window is small and he leans over Mies' shoulder to see. Ignores the scent of her hair and looks down at the girl. She has slung a black lace shawl around her head and shoulders and is skating back and forth. Sullenly, she picks flowers from a ratty, withered bouquet and fires them at the ground. Doesn't look up. "_Flores para los muertos!"_

Mies' eyes flick up to the building opposite, just a second ahead of Holmes'. She cries, "Watch!" and shoves him sideways, pinning him to the floor. A shot rings out. Almost in slow motion, past her, he watches a bullet cut the air where he was just standing, whistle across the room and shatter a mirror.

"What was that?" He's wondering why she hasn't had the decency to roll off him yet before he realizes his arm is wrapped quite tightly around her waist.

"Moran," she breathes, heart twittering like a mouse's. "He's early."


	21. Gravedigger

Having come rather too close to the bullet herself, and bearing in mind what Holmes was trying to invite her to when it happened, Mies is more than willing to go with him when he runs.

But as he opens the outside door at the bottom of her stairwell, there's another shot. He folds back against the wall, one outstretched arm taking her with him, but there's no shattering glass, no round lodged in the doorframe. Instead there is a scream nine or ten feet to the left, and then the usual noises of running and panic and concern for somebody lying on the floor.

The messenger skates up and opens the door, nodding them out. "All clear now."

"Angel Odbody!" Mies snaps, just like a schoolteacher, "If you've had anything to do with this carnage, I'll-"

"She can't help it," Holmes interrupts. "It's her job, isn't it, Morrissey?" Mies eyes him, reading old meanings and unsure what to do with them. But the messenger is overwhelmed, brimming with joy at having finally been named and understood. She is utterly still for a moment, wordless, barely breathing. Then it all breaks from her in a screech that turns into laughter and then turns into her circling the crowd that has gathered on the street and crowing, "_Panic_ _on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham-"_

This continues in the background and Mies says, "I'm going to presume I've missed something with you two."

"Presume. I presume you know more about why Moran just shot a civilian than I do."

While the crowd are looking at the body or the messenger, she puts her hand through his arm and turns them away, heads down, walking fast. "I haven't spoken to him, so I can't be sure, but Sebastian's always talked about a game he wanted to play. Jim thought it was a good idea, but too big, too obvious. It wasn't right for us. But for this? Yeah. Yeah, this is that, I'd bet money. He always wanted to do it to the Prime Minister..."

"The game, Danielle, what's the game?"

"He's going to hunt you. He's going to take a shot at you. If he gets you, that's well and good. If you dodge him, he'll kill a civilian in the area and move on. I'd say you've got at least an hour between attacks where you can try to hide or escape."

"So that's why he couldn't do the Prime Minister..."

"Why?"

"Too much public sympathy."

Streets away, they start to hear sirens. It's no use. Moran was already long gone when they started walking, and with the messenger dancing and shouting nobody could have seen him go. She skids coming out of a side street, looking left and right for them. Mies waves a hand, shooing her. But she approaches, long slow strides, keeping her eyes down like Alice before the Queen. "I know, I'm too recognizable, but I just want to know where to find you."

Mies looks up and shrugs. "Your play, gorgeous. How do you want to do it?"

He has to think. Moran's peculiar gambit leaves him no room for manoeuvre. Choosing a heavily populated area and somewhere Moran will find him easily gives him the opportunity to set up some sort of trap, or at least increases the chances of Moran being seen or stopped, limiting his movement. But it also gives him better choice of a secondary victim. Choosing somewhere isolated greatly lessens his own chances of survival.

"Have you got your Oyster card?"

* * *

Waterloo Station, down on the platforms. They're too late for the evening jams, but this is still the busiest station in London. Here, Moran won't be able to assemble a rifle, never mind fire it. For one, the echo of the shot would be deafening for all involved and leave him vulnerable. He wouldn't chance it. Mies was unimpressed. Tried telling him that her Sebastian would never settle for stalemate, never concede, that this wouldn't stop him, but Holmes isn't listening. He's watching the crowd, the trains, the stairwells; Moran is distinctive, and anyway he won't want to hide. Mies is using his back as a leaning post, watching a blind violinist busking. Holmes feels her smile. "Don't."

"Don't what?"

"You know what?"

"Don't reminisce about the good old days? The few there were between sessions of us being mortal enemies, that is. I'll be honest with you, gorgeous, I've never let anybody play for me again, since you. All this, you and me, standing out from the crowd, intrigue, danger, good art... It triggered a few good memories, that's all."

"I know exactly what it triggered, and I'm telling you not to. And to stop using the word triggered, both of us..."

"Well, we took a pretty good _shot_ at things back then, didn't we?" He almost can't help himself, almost laughs. But the draft of a train just leaving brings him her perfume, and the scents beneath it. A muddy, sweaty smell and the tang of a familiar aftershave... which never suited him and Holmes tried to tell him that, as best he could, by pouring a measure down the sink each morning so that it would go too fast but... Suddenly she's not so funny anymore. Mies heaves a sigh, stands off him. "What's keeping the Angel? She couldn't have taken that different a route."

"She had to find Moran," he tells her simply. "Tell him where we are."

"Oh, alright. No. What?"

"That's her job. She has to play all sides equally, keep the game fair."

"Oh, so we're on display here, rather than hiding."

"I'm sure you're more than used to hanging out your wares."

"I'm sure you're going to get slapped if you keep on, and if I get _shot dead-"_

"What? What will you do when you've been shot dead?"

"Well, you're haunting me, aren't you?" Damn her. She keeps up. Always got an answer, always planning, always ready to run or to fight and knowing the time for either. Damn her for it. Damn her for making him smile when he doesn't want to, for drawing him in on stupid jokes when there's no time for them. For everything that ever happened between them, and this last and greatest slight, her sordid, petty little affair as Maya Darcy. Damn her for the good times, because without that she's just another black piece to be taken without thought or remorse, and for making that history too important to ignore.

Damn her for leaving him thinking of all this when another train is pulling in.

The first thing he knows is that someone has darted past him, and has thrown down a ragged looking rose at his feet. Mies, he thinks, must have heard the turn of a roller skate, because she wheels around. They both look instinctively after the messenger, if only for a millisecond, but that's all Moran needs. He flows off the train with the rest of the crowd, not with a rifle but with a handgun. The grip is white enamel, elaborately painted with a martyred saint all full of arrows. A special occasion gun.

Holmes feels the muzzle press in beneath his ribs and sidesteps before Moran can pull the trigger. All heart, all adrenaline, he tries to get behind the hitter, get an arm across his throat. But Moran is cold and aware. And he's patient; Holmes has dodged him now. "Another time," he mutters, ducks the arm and continues on with the crowd. There is the back of a head in front of him. He brings up the gun and puts a bullet through it before he sees anymore than that.

It's a man this time. He sees that as he steps over the falling body. Last one was a woman, black, shopping bags. This one looks like business. That's good. Mix it up, keep it random. He doesn't want anybody taking him for some basic hood or extremist or serial killer. Christ forefend they call him a vigilante. He'll do the first journo tells him he's doing good.

But yeah, anyway, he waves at Danielle, edges blood off his shoe on the first step and moves on.

Again, the chaos around the corpse gives them time to regroup. "So since that poor bastard's dead," Mies says softly, "can I presume you're alright?"

"Fine." A few more deep breaths and he'll be totally back to normal. Not shaking at all. Not smelling smoke off her hair and fighting a serious nicotine craving. Not having trouble gathering his thoughts. "Danielle, you know him. Where's the last place he'd look? I need time to think this through."

She knows something. It's all over her face that she knows something, but she doesn't want to tell it. What she says in the end is a cheap substitute. "You could try my place. Bluff him out, hope he thinks it's too obvious."

"For God's sake, what are you really thinking?"

"I know," the third voice pipes up. The girl has got her shawl down around her waist. 'I don't want to go on the Tube,' she told Moran, 'and people thinking it's a hijab. I'll draw attention to you.' She's still got her skates on and her dwindling bouquet of roses and gyp, but her headscarf would have drawn attention. Nonetheless, "I know what she's thinking."

"Don't do it, Odbody," Mies says. Not a warning, just asking.

"If you ask me I have to tell you, Detective. You know that."

"Where then? One of you be straight with me and tell me where."

The messenger takes off. Holmes is right at her heels. Mies lingers a second, calls out, "Just _wait_," but he doesn't want to. And when he keeps going, ultimately she goes with him.

He follows the girl as she weaves the crowds, taking him quickly to the next platform. Jubilee line. A train just pulling in and spewing passengers who are finished with it, but it will be leaving soon. Five stops down the Jubilee line from Waterloo. He knows it exactly. It takes thirteen minutes and twelve seconds in optimal circumstances. Five stops from Waterloo. Baker Street.

The messenger takes his hand in both of hers and hops up on pointe to speak in his ear. "It's alright. It's locked up. Hudson isn't there anymore. She still owns it, but she's not there and there's nobody in it. It's alright."

"Or," Mies cuts in, just caught up, "we hit one of Jim's old safehouses out in the suburbs, lock up in a lockup until you're ready to-"

But he takes that first step forward, still holding the messenger's hand, towards the train.


	22. Dealer's Choice

The messenger flew on ahead of them to open the door. Holmes doesn't realize his steps have slowed. Mies still has her arm through his, since a couple attracts less attention than two people alone. But now she puts her head down on his shoulder and it's nothing to do with the cover. This was never the right idea. He's walking towards it like a cliff-edge and she doesn't want him to anymore. She thinks, prepares, opens her mouth for the words, 'You don't have to do this.' Stops it and closes her mouth again. He wouldn't hear her anyway. He's not hearing anything.

By the time they reach the front door, the angel has been around the back and gotten it open. They walk in cleanly, belonging, but Holmes stops dead on the threshold.

Mies fishes quickly in her bag, shoves some notes into the messenger's hands. "Angel, love, pop out for chips," she says, soft, fast. "And try and stay away from Seb, would you?"

"Can I have a pastie?"

"'Course. Whatever you want. Now fly, my pretty."

She starts to go. Holmes' hand stretches out and wraps her upper arm. He doesn't know how tightly he holds her, and starts to tell her where the best chip shop is, where he wants her to go, how to get there. She pulls gently away shaking her head. "Nah. It's an Indian now."

His eyes follow her out. They fix on the inside of the door as Mies is closing it. There are no less than eight new locks and latches and deadbolts swinging loose now along the edge. He points but can't find the words. "She had to," Mies explains. "The believers were worse than the hacks. Everybody wanted a piece." She thinks of the broken glass concreted to the upstairs windowsills and shuts her eyes. This time, she gets it out; "You don't have to do this. We can still go somewhere else."

There's a moment too long of a pause, and his smile afterward is a shade too sudden, too bright. "Nonsense," he says, jamming his hands back in his pockets, starting on the stairs. "The chips would be cold by the time she found us."

She follows him up. He stops again at his own door, but very briefly this time. She hangs her head when he opens it. Mies has seen in the inside, and feels like she knows what must be coming. She's scared he'll cover up shock and sadness with disgust and stop thinking entirely. Hanging in the door frame, she says, honestly, "I'm sorry."

"What are you talking about? It's the perfect place. Exactly as it was."

"What?"

The wallpaper is peeling at the corners, bubbling around the bullet holes in the wall. There's a curtain half down off its track. All the scientific apparatus was gathered on the kitchen worktops a long time ago and left to gather dust. Worst, most hurtful, for both of them, the newspaper clippings from the trial of James Moriarty are still damp and yellow and rotten on the wall.

"Really rather clever of the girl. Certainly the last place anyone would still look." She's aware he doesn't think she has one, but her heart breaks for him. She takes out her cigarettes and offers him the pack. "No thank you. Well, yes. Have you got a light?"

Mies lights two between her lips and passes one to him. Watches him step towards his old armchair, change his mind. He steps right over the coffee table and sits down on the sofa. She keeps herself next to him, close, just in case.

"Danielle, _why_ are you staring at me?"

"Because I'm worried."

"Kindly don't be. I'm trying to think around Moran."

"Do you want me to slope off?"

"No. Stay there. In case I need to ask you about him." His cigarette changes hands, leaving the hand nearest her free. She takes that as an invitation, stroking his fingers between hers. For a long time the most either of them moves is when she stretches out for an abandoned coffee cup to use as an ashtray. And the next sound made is when he turns his head towards her and asks, "How long?"

"How long have I known Sebastian?"

"_No_. You and..."

"Me and _Watson_? Not to get all indignant, I know I've not really the right, but is that really what you're thinking about while your continued existence is endangering civilians?"

"The quickest route to an answer is not always a straight line. Don't dodge the question."

"I'm not. Why would I? It started first not long after you died. Like I say, I spotted pretty fast that he didn't know anything. Anyway, Maya travels a lot for work, so-"

"Oh? What does she do?"

"Import-export. Art, primarily."

"Oh, very funny."

"Well, it's an area I can talk about. So it's only ever been an occasional thing. If it helps you any, it's dead casual. Really just sex. And he has _no_ idea who I am, I wouldn't do it if he did."

"It doesn't help."

She sighs and shoves him. "You're not thinking at all. I have been hit by Morgan myself and I'm telling you you still need proper rest. You need to take advantage of the fact that Moran won't find you here without help and at least be ready for him next time he comes." He looks around at her like she's just sworn at him. "What?"

"That, from you, almost sounded sensible."

"I've always taken care of you, gorgeous; you just never let me. Go to bed. Me and the Angel will keep close watch."

"No."

"Yes." She pulls him up by the collar of his coat, starts to tug him towards the adjoining door.

"_No_, Danielle. I..." She reads it perfectly. Because if she puts him in there and closes the door, even if he sleeps he won't rest. He's just about alright to be here. He can't be alone.

He can't ask, either, but she can offer. "I'll stay with you. Nothing funny, I'll just... I'll be close. Yeah?"

* * *

The angel came back with the food, thinking she was doing the right thing. Miss Mies met her from the bedroom door, told her to sit down and watch the windows, that there'd been a change of plan. So she's eating her way through the second portion, keeping an eye and _hating_ the Bitch. Just _typical_ of her, left alone for half a minute and she ends up on her back. It's disgusting.

It's not right. It's not faithful.

So when her phone buzzes she answers it gratefully, because she wants to talk to someone else, and even though she's meant to be protecting Miss Mies she doesn't want to anymore.

"Hello?"

"Evening, Scout."

"Hello, Colonel."

"I see Dani's got her way."

"She's horrible. Where are you watching from? Can i come and sit with you?"

"Not be long, girl. First I want you to put Danielle on the line. She's not answering her own."

"Oh, Colonel, I don't want to go in there."

"Don't worry. No nasty surprises."

The angel wraps her arms around herself and goes to the other door. Eases it open and enters with her back turned. "What is it, love?" Mies murmurs over. The messenger very cautiously pivots and looks over. It's not what she expected. Mies is sitting up with her back to the headboard, and fully dressed. Holmes is asleep, over on his side with his head on her knees. Her voice is sad, even when she smiles, "What on earth did you think we were up to in complete silence?"

The messenger sullenly holds out her phone. "Moran. Wants to talk."

Mies, in retort, raises her own, with all the missed calls on its screen. "I know. Tell him to piss off."

But the messenger keeps her phone out, rolls close enough for Mies to take it. Just holds it there and turns her eyes away, not going anywhere. So Mies snatches it away and the messenger ducks like it's her head she's grabbing for. She sits down at the side of the bed and hugs her knees so she can't see anything, only listening in.

"What do you want? ... No, I will _not_ make him stand up, what are you talking about? ... 'Why not?' You daft bastard; he's the best chance any of us has of getting to the end of this." And his eyes are opening. Mies doesn't know that, but the messenger lifts her head enough to see. It pains him to hear her talking about him that way. The messenger tries to smile, tries to be comforting. She peels a flower off her bouquet and slides it across the covers to him.

But he doesn't have time to take it. Mies doesn't have time to say anymore.

Shots are fired in the street.

Several rapid bursts, not a single round. Mies is on her feet and leaning into the window in a half second. "Seb? Sebastian, speak!" She goes still, listening, eyes scanning the street for the gunmen, because it was _not_ anyone she knows. Whatever Moran says, she rushes back to the bed. Holmes has been wakening, but only slowly, like one who's been sick for a long time. She shakes him, finds his eyes and makes sure they focus. "Look at me. Look at me; are you alright?"

"What's going on?"

"_Panic_. Like the lady said. They're moving against the London Sniper. There's no time and we can't stay here. I'm going to find out what's going on. Odbody here's going to take you to a house which is properly empty this time. Alright?" She looks from him to the messenger, just glancing. But the angel knows the meaning and the importance of what she just said. The magic words. A phrase she didn't think anybody else knew and Mies is thinking the same, wondering if it's hit the right chord with her. The angel nods, military and justified. Mies grabs Holmes suddenly close, and is as shocked as he is to have the hug returned. "I'll meet you at the finale." She gets up and all but runs from the room, only stopping to hug the messenger too. The angel doesn't really know what to do, stands with her arms by her sides and is silent. "I'm off to save the Colonel. Take care of him."

"Yeah. Of course."

Mies bolts.

As Holmes climbs to his feet, shaking the last of sleep out of his head, the angel goes to him and straightens his coat. "Don't worry," she says. "It's nearly over now."

* * *

[A/N - She's right, y'know. I can smell end credits in the not-so-distance. Hang on just a few nights more, friends.]


	23. The Rubicon

Drugged. His first thought was that he'd been drugged. It's the same watery sort of a feeling, as though he is only just heavier than the air and the air is full of currents that want to shift and move him. It's the same empty-headedness he used to mistake for bliss. It's hell just now. He needs to be cautious and rational, but it's all he can do to stay on his feet. If it wasn't for the guiding hands of the girl, he wouldn't make it down the stairs, never mind across the yard and out away from the street.

There are more shots, while they're running. A different quality to the original bursts. One a heavy round, a high-powered rifle, the bullets meant for him. One a more delicate sort of pop, a handgun. Mies and Moran fighting back.

"Who is it?" he murmurs to the messenger. She doesn't hear him and he repeats, "Who is it, who's firing?"

"Them."

"But who _started _the fight?"

The manic little demon laughs, "_Them_!"

He's almost far enough gone to see the funny side, and far enough indeed not to wonder why the two of them, in their current conditions, have no trouble pulling over a cab. And he's sitting in the back again, because she's with him, because she's giving him a worried once-over. "What did Mies give me?"

"What?"

"I've been spiked. She knows she can't do that. She knows from before that she-"

"You're exhausted," the girl tells him, pushing back his hair, pulling his collar round tight. "You're starving. I saw what you did to Morgan and I'm telling you you're stressed, not to mention you're probably concussed from the blow. Even your brain can't manage all that at once." It takes a moment for him to realize she's probably right, and that it's insightful of her to add it all up. There on the backseat she leans in against him and pulls his arm around her shoulders. "That's the problem. You concentrate too hard and you miss the real stuff." She takes his phone out of his pocket. He has neither the strength nor the inclination to stop her. "I'm texting the address to Doctor Hooper. Just in case."

"Where are we going?"

"Like Miss Mies said; an empty house. Nobody home but us ghosts."

Something about that. The plural, maybe. _Something_ gets through the fug and makes him ask, "What do you mean, the real stuff?"

There is a pause that tells him she heard the question but chooses to ignore it. "You'll like it there. And being ghosts. We can throw sheets over our heads and hide in corners saying '_Woooo_' at anyone who comes in." As if to demonstrate, she throws her shawl back over her head, and he notices for the first time that the black lace is run through with delicate gold thread roses. _Flores_. "Take it from somebody who's been everything. I've been His angel and a courier and homeless and Holmesless and dead and nearly dead. I've been the herald of your homecoming and a black-gloved hand. I've been Faith. Been an evangelist and a conscience and a croupier and a superhero, and that's just this week. And it's really nice being a ghost. Nobody expects anything of you."

"What do you mean, _real stuff_, little Morrissey?"

He gave her a name. That makes him harder to ignore. She hugs him tighter, starts singing under her breath, "_And if I die today, I'll be the happy phantom_-"

He singsongs back, "Oh, _an -_gel... You still owe me a favour. You gave me Milverton's victim, and you gave me Morgan, but I get three."

"I just escaped you out of-"

"But I didn't ask you to. That's you being the angel, not the dealer of the cards." She shakes her head at him, lips parted to give him an argument, but she can't think of one. She starts to pout instead. "It's tough having so many different parts to play, isn't it? Maybe you're burnt out too." She gives him back his arm and sits sulking with her arms folded. Mutters at him how this isn't fair, how this is manipulative, and all she's ever done is help him, even since before this started. "You don't even know what I'm going to ask you yet."

"I don't care. I'm annoyed at you."

"Doesn't matter. If I ask, you have to tell me. What's the real stuff?"

She rolls in her seat, pressing a hand over her eyes and keens, "He's going to strike me _down_..." She gets a moment to dwell on this, because when she leans despairingly over her knees her headscarf slides forward off her shoulders. She has scars there, perfectly symmetrical scars on either shoulder blade. They start out as knife marks, little skeleton fingers reaching down from the back of her neck. Then, from the ends, there are little pointed flaying marks.

Wings.

He puts out a hand, unthinking, just wanting to touch the skin and know that it's real, that it's not just another trick.

She mistakes the touch for comfort and says, slowly, heavily, "Real stuff is like Alexander Forrester."

"Who?"

"Yeah, see? Typical. You didn't even _try_. He's the dead man, the one who topped himself at the hotel."

"Ah. Milverton's."

The girl tosses her head, "Ha. Do you think?" She arches back so she can fish her mobile out of her pocket. "Look, I've got a recording. You can't tell anybody I played this for you and if anyone else uses it you have to pretend it's the first time you're hearing it, alright?" He nods, and intends to keep nodding until he knows what she's talking about. "Uncle Charlie's as good at his straightforward lies as he is at blackmail. Listen to this."

She recorded a telephone conversation between Milverton and Forrester. Forrester, he finds out by the way he answers the phone, is the senior crime correspondent for a minor cable news channel.

"Have you got a story for me?" he says, when Milverton introduces himself.

"No. A warning."

"Oh good. Love warnings. That's where I get exclusives from."

"I'm afraid you've had yours. I just wanted to let you know that Sherlock Holmes is alive and well and back in London."

"You bloody believers. Haven't you calmed down yet?"

"Oh, believe me, this is as much bad news for me as it is for you. After all, all that scandal you made up about him in the aftermath, I'm sure he's not a little ticked off. Rumour has it he's not quite the kind, forgiving soul he once was."

"Get me photographs and we'll talk."

"Oh, I can do better than that. There's a room, in the name of Mr Diamond, at a little place in King's Cross."

He goes on to give details, but the girl cuts their voices off. She says nothing, but she's right, of course. Holmes paid no attention whatever to the body on the bed, except as a way to Milverton. But still, it hardly makes any difference. Just because the victim had an old and very tenuous connection to him? Why, to have even become a senior crime correspondent in the first place he must have slandered and smeared dozens of names. All in a day's work, and the dangers of it all tucked away so he could sleep at night.

He tells her so.

"When did the police arrive?" she says. It seems like a non-sequitur, but she's leading him on, the way she has from the beginning. And she still looks pale and tormented, like she's expecting a lightning bolt to flash from the sky and leave her a pair of smouldering roller skates, so he presumes it's all important.

"Ninety minutes later, give or take."

"Right, so there was a bit of time between you getting out of that room and the police getting in. That's all you're supposed to put together. So that was Uncle Charlie, right? And then there was Miss Mies. D is for Dani, and the diamonds she stole. You once knew their owner, a friend dear and old..."

His head spins. "No riddles."

"Miss Mies told you everything you needed to know about her heist. She _told_ you, it's all about plain sight; so long as no one sees you you're not there. You knew enough to foil her and you didn't look for any more. If you had, you would have known that the collector had only borrowed the necklace from a mistress. And I choose that word very carefully."

His mouth, for just a moment, is too dry to speak. Eventually, he coughs out, "_Adler_."

"The very same, sir."

Holmes shakes himself. Forces himself to straighten up and, rather than look at the girl, looks out the window. "I still don't see how that changes the game."

"I know you don't. It's not supposed to make sense yet. I'm not allowed to explain that. Oh, did you ever find out what Morgan took from the pawnshop, by the way? No, no, you didn't. I do, because I had to get it off him and bring it to Miss Mies. You probably don't even remember it. It was a watch of yours. When you died, you'd left it with Mag so she could put a link back in. You didn't need it, you just wanted her to have something of yours when you died. I'm not stupid. Angels know everything."

"Why did you have to bring it to Mies?"

"Thought it didn't matter? Thought it wasn't important? That's what you told Emily." She is deeply, coldly angry with him, and he can't figure out why. She sits back, staring into the back of the driver's head. It's the most lucid he's ever seen her. Not placid, though. That's not why she's suddenly still, why her voice is level and dull. She's not content or calm. Spent. "So who does that leave us with, then?"

"Moran."

"Just Moran?"

"Who else?"

"Moran, then. Moran found you at Baker Street. I didn't have to help him. Somebody else told him that the powers that be, the powers out to apprehend the London Sniper on his first day out, were already watching 221. Now why would they be doing that? I'll give you a clue. Who would still dare to think he could recognize you, you being altered and disguised and presumed dead, from grainy, Underground station CCTV?"

Mycroft. He doesn't say it aloud because it stuns him.

"So who does that leave us with?" she says.

"I... That's everyone, isn't it?"

"Oh." She curls over on her side. Coming out of her little clearing, it would seem, and back into the dark where she's mad and her voice can turn suddenly teary. "Yeah, okay then. All caught up."

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing. We're nearly there."

He stretches out a hand again, but this time she flinches like the wounds on her back are still raw. "Little Morrissey..."

"Don't. I've changed my mind. I don't want a name from _you_."


	24. Deceitful, Above All Things

He's almost certain the house they stop at used to be a much frequented doss. It stands alone, set back from the road on a square of tarmac sparkling wicked with little crystals of broken glass. The building itself looks mere days away from demolition or collapse. Bu the windows are intact. The door _looks_ shaky, but is deceptively sturdy. It'll take two blasts with the battering ram, normally, give the nimble and aware time to get out the back windows.

But there should be no need for that tonight.

The taxi drops them off at the road. Still sullen, rubbing the tear-tracks into her face, the angel skates around and helps him down. But as the taxi pulls away she turns. Mies is leaning on a black motorbike just below the front window. The messenger lets go of his arm and worms around behind him.

"You never told me why you're so afraid of her," he says quietly, confidentially.

"Because you're not. Because she seemed alright with you today, but she's hated you. She's worse than my God, sometimes, the way she talks and rages."

But Danielle is smiling as he approaches, albeit in a small, sad way. "Still feeling rough?"

He skips that question. "How did you get here so quickly?"

Reaching back to pat the bike, "Rode with Seb. Don't worry, there's no laser dot on you. He told me to give you this." She holds out a creased, dog-eared Ace of Spades. Holmes takes it, but keeps his other hand out, still waiting. Mies pretends for a moment, but then sighs. The Queen is in her jacket pocket this time. She could hardly keep it by her heart today, after all, not with this afternoon's assignation on her mind. That might have raised some questions. He reaches, but she pulls it back at the last minute. "This doesn't mean you beat me."

He snatches it, takes the rest out of his pocket to check. Milverton's King is still pristine; the man hasn't had a pinch of dirt on his hands in years. Morgan's Jack is singed black at the edge, but that was Holmes' own fault. Mies's is still warm. Moran's completes the hand and he knows now, and feels as if he has known all along, that this house he has been brought to is anything but empty.

"Are you ready?" says Mies, opening the door for him.

"Me?" he retorts, as he passes her. She follows him directly, leaving the angel lingering behind. "Why, I thought you would have guessed, Danielle. A dead man is ready for anything. No more can be done to him. Once he's given up his life, nothing else can be taken from him." Inside, he follows the trace of a single light to a room at the back. The windows have been kicked in, last year's dead leaves turned brittle as sugar scattering across the floor. There's a ratty, damp sofa, but Mies eases into it like the finest Chesterfield. Holmes opts instead for a plastic folding chair that is lying abandoned on its side, picks it up and settles himself. "That was rather the point of this whole exercise. I would have thought you'd have gathered that."

She laughs darkly, "Oh, I gathered. It's alright for you. You had a choice."

"I beg your pardon?"

"You pretended. You ran away to be dead."

"Danielle?" She ran out of that bedroom not forty minutes ago, but now she's like another woman. The concern, the quick humour, her wary respect, all of that has vanished, gone off her like mist off cold black waters. Most terribly of all, he notices that she has shut off the light in her eyes. She can do that at will. She's done it to him before, but he deserved it then. They close like shutters and hold no warmth, no eloquence, _nothing_.

"You never had to actually _be_ dead, that's what I mean."

"Listen, if you're talking about Moriarty-"

Loudly, nasty-bright, _"No! _Guess again!" He won't. Won't play. Hates his own foolishness that he would let his guard down for even a second. That's why she was there when he went to Milverton, that's why Morgan protected her, that's why she always saw Moran a moment before him, that's why the angel is so terrified of her. The facts fall into place and tell him he never should have shared a single word with her. She snaps, biting down, "_Me_. Me, Sherlock. I'm dead."

"Then half of London is a necrophiliac."

"Cheap shot. Bit beneath you, that. And a bit mean to a certain friend of yours. He's going to find who I am, by the way."

Lightly, taunting her, "Over my dead body. And speaking of corpses, I believe you had a speech prepared about your own?"

"Don't take the mick. I've had a long time to think about this. But I suppose I told you most of it at Baker Street. Not tonight, you understand, but the first time. Way back. When I went to beg you not to fall."

"Danielle, I've seen you beg. That wasn't it."

"Laugh it up. It's brave of you, certainly. All I want to tell you here and now, before I let you come to the obvious conclusion you've been looking at too long to even see, is that you drove mad and destroyed the only thing I ever really loved, and in my eyes you killed him."

"So what's the plan? Get me out here in the middle of nowhere and finish me off properly? Cheap shot, Danielle. Bit beneath you."

She laughs, brighter this time. It doesn't matter how he plays it; she thinks she's got him cornered. If he wants to take it as a joke, she's content to let him, until the sword falls. But she lights a cigarette. He reads the very precise motions of her long white fingers, the fact that she doesn't offer him one this time. And because he smoked with her before, the craving is huge and very real, and still associated with her. Temptation triggers her, not the other way round. She lights up and smokes, not because she needs the nicotine or something to occupy her hands, but to punish him.

He stands and paces away from her across the room.

"Sebastian could do that for me. There's a laser dot _now_, by the way, if you look down at your chest. But then we could have done that in Paris, or Melbourne, or Okinawa." He looks from the red light directly into her gaze, too quick, not hiding his surprise. "Oh, we were there. One of us was always there. That's how we knew you were coming back for us. We were there when you got off the slab and walked out of the morgue. That was very sloppy, by the way."

"Plain sight," he says. "No one's expecting the corpse."

"Ah, but we don't underestimate you, see?" She turns her head over towards the lamp. He spots the little microphone bracketed inside the rim. Moran must be listening, because she says, "Easy, tiger," and the dot disappears again. "So that left a question. What can you take from a man who isn't even alive? And the answer, you're quite right, is nothing. But you can _give_. Oh, God, how you can give. The riches you can heap upon him are limitless."

From beyond a plume of smoke she watches him closely. A grin spreads slowly, unnervingly across her face.

The messenger slips forward out of the shadows and crouches by the arm of the sofa. Apologetically, she says, "I had to tell him a couple of things. He asked and it was the rules. I'm really sorry. I know you wanted to play the whole scene, but-"

"No, no, love," Mies says, and hugs the girl tightly under one arm. "You did just right. Look at it dawning on him. I wouldn't miss this for the world."

"I didn't tell him about what copper got the cases or... did we tell him Hudson still owns-?"

"Yes, dear. Don't worry. You did just right."

"Did I do it right?"

"You did it beautifully." This last is not spoken by Mies. Or by Holmes. Or by any other voice that was already in the room.


	25. Full House

_'You did it beautifully_...'

That voice comes from the other side of a dark doorway, still holding back. It is a familiar voice, in a way, like that of a long dead actor appearing on television.

For a moment, everything, everyone, stops.

The messenger is frozen for less than a second. Then she's on her feet and crosses to that door, flings it open and practically screams with delight. A pair of hands in heavy black gloves reach out and hug her into placid, overjoyed silence.

Mies can't keep the light in her eyes switched off. She covers her mouth and her chest swells because she can't breathe, and she can't move enough to even turn and look.

Holmes very simply feels the world fall away. And his heart, beating hard, beating out of his chest, alight. "Impossible," he breathes.

"So are you," Mies bites. Her voice, for once, is quiet, almost beneath notice.

And far away in the background that shadow is smoothing down the angel's hair, tipping up her chin. "There now, let go. There's a good girl. Turn around, how'd those wings of yours heal up? Let me look at you. You're run ragged, poor thing. Go, get sat down. Take the weight off your wheels."

That voice. That damned, sing-song, fairytale voice.

He rolls her out of the dark ahead of him. Then, finally steps into the light. Not quite so scrupulously well kept as he was in the past. A little ragged, perhaps, and looking older behind a heavy layer of stubble. He raises a hand, "I know, I know," then indicates his jacket. "But you have to admit, it's still good tailoring." For once in his life, Holmes has absolutely nothing. He went along with the suspicion to trap Mies. Never for a second believed that she might be right.

James Moriarty points over at him. "You need a minute to take this in. That's alright. I need a minute to say hello to the Queen, who hasn't even got up off her arse and it's been two years and I'm really, really offended, Danielle."

"I don't think my legs would manage." She is rapt as a saint, glowing, beatific.

She can't see him, but Holmes can, the way his smile twists as he steps up behind her and says, "Short of crushing a tree trunk, there's very little your legs wouldn't manage." He reaches over the back of the sofa and places a gloved hand on her neck, roving over her face and shoulder. She brings her own up to join it, leaning into his touch. Her need, her pleasure, is genuine where it has always been tempered with sense.

Holmes looks on like it's all another nightmare. Like he's about to reach into Moriarty's chest and remove his still-beating heart with ease and impunity. That, however, would be a dream. This is a nightmare because he can't move, can't do anything. He does, however, summon enough of himself to start reaching for his inside pocket.

Danielle Mies is lost, verging on tears. She breaks and words tumble from her, fast, uncalculated, tangling herself, "I always believed. I knew you'd come to back to me. If _he_ was alive you _had_ to be. If they told me you'd shot yourself after he jumped, I would have believed them, but you wouldn't leave before the curtain. I knew it." She's gone, and doesn't think how it torments Holmes to hear her say it and mean it so intensely she can't even control herself. She wants Moriarty so much she can't even look at him.

Holmes's hand eases inside his coat.

There should still be a knife in his inside pocket. The one the messenger put there on the very first night, when she all but knocked him off his feet. 'Helping him,' she kept saying, 'from the beginning.'

It's not there. He slept while he was guarded by a thief, or the angel straightened his lapels, but it's not there.

In the same moment that he discovers this fact, he sees Moriarty's eyes lift from Mies. They lock stares for just a second before Holmes sees the other gloved hand appear, and the knife, and the blade flicking out of the handle. Before he can call out her name or even breathe to do it, a flash of murderous silver cuts Danielle's throat.

The angel is screaming, but she's the only one. Mies is gasping, and choking on her own blood. Moriarty holds her head still and presses his own close, murmuring comfort in her ear, to be quiet, to be still, that it's almost over, that it's quick, it doesn't hurt, it's quick. Holmes isn't sure she can hear him. If she does, she doesn't find it all that comforting. She bleeds too much and breathes too little to last very long at all. Falling from her last real happiness, Danielle Mies dies afraid and confused and betrayed.

Holmes watches her fade out right in front of him. Then goes back to the folding chair, slowly, sickly, sits down.

Moriarty gently lets Mies's head hang down and releases her. For a moment he stands with both hands on the sofa back, looking as though a great weight has just come to rest upon him. He breathes out long and low, then suddenly stabs the knife in to stand in the cushion. He rounds the sofa and sits next to the body. Takes her hand in the clean glove, but the glove seems to disgust him now, and he violently strips it off, throws it across her knees.

He's wearing, Holmes notes, because noting things is easier and makes more sense, latex laboratory gloves underneath. He's more careful with those. Pulls them off with a snap and just as much hatred, but leaves them by his side. Then holds her hand again.

The girl is lingering behind him, and starting to feel a little forgotten, so she cries out again, wailing except that her lips are pressed together. Moriarty remembers she's there and hugs her down next to him. Over her head, he raises his eyes to Holmes and rolls them towards heaven; 'Sorry. What can you do?' "Sure you never liked her anyway," he tells the angel. She's happy not to answer, just to stay there against him. With the girl's scars and the madman beginning to smile again and Mies slumped at the other arm, the effect is very much that of a bleak, awful family portrait. To Holmes, as though explaining to a guest, "I used to forget myself and call Dani 'angel' too. She's an awful jealous little thing, this one."

All of this, perhaps, begins to explain why Holmes hasn't acted yet. Why he sat down as if to watch where this goes and no more. It is terrible and surreal and his sanity forbids him from entering the scene. That is, until Moriarty breaks it.

He jogs the angel's shoulder, "I need to get this one home and counselled before the trauma burns too deep, so let's get this over with. You're alright? You've come to terms? We can talk, I mean, and the shock won't get in the way?"

"I'll live."

"Aha, well, _quite_." From sobbing, muffled in his shoulder, the messenger giggles. "Ah, you like that, angel? Listen in, because the best joke's yet to come. Now, detective, before I had to interrupt dear Dani just now, you were starting to figure something out, weren't you? I have to admit, the look on your face was priceless."

"I have been resurrected."

Moriarty makes a noise like a microwave bell going off, "Correct. Tricked over the edge one careless step at a time."

"It can be denied. If I disappear again, there's no proof. All your supposed _clues_, Forrester and Adler's diamonds and all of it, it's just circumstantial."

Tossing his head, "Not quite all of it. You don't know all of it yet. Anyway, even if it was, it wouldn't matter. All people have to do is talk about it and after _Baker Street_, well... That was quite good, actually. Was that your idea, Odbody, did I hear that right?" She peels back from him and nods, turning pointedly away from Mies' body. "You're a good girl. You're my angel, aren't you?"

She snivels miserably, "Always."

"My best angel. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, aye, the clues... Clues is a funny word for them. Me, I just think of that as set-dressing." During this, he pushes the angel up by the small of the back, gliding her towards the door. She goes and hangs by the post. Moriarty himself looks around at Mies, pulling her hair out of the wet black gash across her neck.

Holmes is _supposed_ to ask, 'Set-dressing for what?'

What he does instead is point at the dead woman, "She would have done anything for you."

"That's sort of my secondary point. And it's the one I was trying to show you too. You and me, we don't need anybody to do for us."

"Oh, so that's why Molly was a target. And Mag Slope."

He laughs, ducking his head in to kiss Mies's sallow cheek. "And John Watson, no doubt." Holmes starts out of his chair, but Moriarty pulls back, both hands raised, "Oh, hold on a minute. Look at the facts here. I've let you have Milverton, Morgan, Moran's rendered himself useless now he's the London bloody Sniper. I've _given_ you Dani, Christ's sake. Honestly, sometimes you don't think before you open your-"

"Car," the messenger calls. "People. Soon. _Now_, sir."

"Already?" Moriarty asks her thoughtfully. He looks smiling back to Holmes. "You might have to put the rest of this one together for yourself, old sport. Don't worry, there's not much work left to do."

Holmes grabs for him, tells him he's not going anywhere. But then he feels the laser sight in the side of his head again, following Moriarty's sight-line and can't help but ask, "You've just murdered Moran's closest friend, why would-"

"Oh, that's not Moran. Do you think _I'd_ still be alive if that was Moran? Moran was replaced by another sympathetic party just after Danielle spoke to him then. He's gone down by the river to draw off the spooks." Under the sniper's eye, Holmes is forced to stand and watch again as Moriarty simply gets up and slips away. "I suppose I don't have to run out the old cliché about no sudden moves, do I?"

"You didn't, no."

The only things Moriarty takes with him are the latex gloves, his own appreciative smile and the girl. "Don't worry. We'll see each other again once I've packed my angel off home."

Hating it all, and mostly the voice disappearing away down the hall, Holmes doesn't answer.

He is thinking, obsessively, Draw, Win, Lose, Draw, Win, Lose. Round one was a draw, round two he won, and this third round he's lost. But all the loss means is that the scores are even now. The next hand will be sudden death.

Speaking of sudden death...

He is looking at the knife sticking out of the sofa behind Mies. His fingerprints are on it. He covers his hand and reaches out, but a round is fired, enters at the empty window frame and is buried in the wall near the door. Damn. And thinking of fingerprints, he thinks of Moriarty's gloves and looks down at them, limp in Mies's lap.

They're not Moriarty's at all. They're his. The ones he gave to the girl to get rid of the night he visited Milverton's victim. He abandoned her then, left her in the suburbs with no taxi. Well, that'll teach him.

Those gloves are still full of his untainted traces, and none of the madman's, because of the lab gloves he wore underneath.

Damn.

He stands back from the body and sees the laser still dancing for a moment on the wall before it follows him. Why is he being kept here? Just to let them get away? Or is there something he has yet to see?

_Car_, the girl said. Car-people-soon-now. Footsteps that come creeping along because they heard the first round fired. Two sets of them.

He remembers the angel texting Molly from the cab. Molly appears first, and the sight of him standing over Mies leaves her breathless, unable to speak, unable to explain. And whoever is with her she is trying to push them back, keep them away from this. But a voice that pains Holmes as much as it did this afternoon argues against her, "What is it? Molly, get out of the way."

Because Morgan stole the watch from the pawnshop and the angel took it to Mies and Mies took it to where its significance would be understood.

Draw, win, lose.

"Jesus Christ, Maya" John Watson breathes in shock. And on that breath, the whole sick house of cards collapses.

* * *

[Now, if you're an old fashioned villain like me, that's a very satisfying ending, don't you think? All you believers, if I'm feeling kind, maybe I'll write you a sequel to tell you how Holmes was framed for far, far more than just the murder of Danielle Mies. Who knows, I might even be persuaded to let him clear his name. He's alive to do it now, I suppose...

What do you think? Let me know three things – a) if you're up for another round, b) what you liked about this one (so I can do it again), and c) anything you didn't like (so I can... take a look at it and assess its literary worth objectively...)

And finally, if you've been with me this far, please just know you have my gratitude and, eternally –

All my hearts,

Sal.]


End file.
